LIBRARY Of CONGRESS. 



Chap. ^ C(tpyr^hOo.. 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 




Parson Ralph Riley. 



Twenty- Five Years a Parson 
IN THE Wild West . 



BEING THE EXPERIENCE OF 

PARSON RALPH RILEY 



BY 

REV. JOHN BROWN 

Ex-Member of the Massachusetts Legislature 



-i. ^x 



\<\'^r '1 



FALL RIYER, MASS. 
PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR. 

1896. 



mmxi 



•Bg'] 



Copyright, 1896, 

BY 

Rev. John Brown 



All rights reserved. 






?IfOEXEf> 



DeMcatcb 



TO MY MANY FRIENDS 
IN THE CITY OF FALL RIVER. 



LIFE IS A MINGLED YARN. 

THE LAWYER KNOWS PEOPLE AS THEY SEEM TO BE. 

THE DOCTOR KNOWS THEM AS THEY ARE. 

THE PARSON KNOWS THEM AS THEY WOULD LIKE TO BE. 

THE FATHER IN HEAVEN KNOWS THE LAWYER, THE DOCTOR, THE 
PARSON, AND THE PEOPLE AT THEIR REAL VALUE. 



INTRODUCTION. 



MARK TWAIN and other humorists have described 
to us the great half-civihzed frontier of the 
West, but no one has ever before attempted to do so 
from the same standpoint our author does. To our 
mind this book throws much new Hght on life in the 
wild West as few other books do, for it tells the whole 
story honestly and in a most natural way, without giving 
it any religious coloring. It is full of fun and humor, 
because the parson saw much to laugh at. Like other 
frontier parsons, he no doubt saw much also to weep 
over, but this does not come within the province of the 
present volume. 

The author's record on the Western missionary field 
is well and honorably known to the Presbyterian Board 
of Home Missions. To young ministers contemplating 
work on our great Western borders, to the tens of thou- 
sands who are contributors to the extension of religion 
and civilization all over this land from sea to sea, to 
those who have near relatives roughing it on the frontier, 
as well as to those who have, or are likely to have, financial 
interests in our new States and Territories, this artless 

5 





6 INTRODUCTION. 

Story will be read with more than passing interest. 
There are too many among us here in the East who find 
Hfe dull and aimless, and because of this a sort of 
mental and moral miasma has taken hold of their vitals, 
who if they would but read what Parson Riley has to 
tell them, they would be stirred by the hfe-giving breezes 
which blow from the Rocky Mountains, the Sierra Nevada, 
the wide plains of Texas, and the South Atlantic Ocean. 
It will give information and amusement to all, and that 
too in language which is charming in its simplicity. 

P. M. MACDONALD, 

Pastor St. Andrew's Church, 

Boston, Mass. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I. PAGE 

The Preparation 9 

CHAPTER H. 
The Start ^7 

CHAPTER HI. 
The Work 28 

CHAPTER IV. 
The Indians 3^ 

CHAPTER V. 
The Hotels 3^ 

CHAPTER VI. 
The Blundering • • 45 

CHAPTER VH. 
The Gambler 5^ 

CHAPTER VHI. 
The Miner 57 

CHAPTER IX. 
The Stage Robber 72 

CHAPTER X. 
The Queer Preacher 75 

CHAPTER XI. 
The Church Member 83 

CHAPTER XII. 
The Church Row 9^ 

CHAPTER XIII. 
"Indian Joe" • • 95 



8 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XIV. PAGE 

The Mormon loo 

CHAPTER XV. 
Texas 119 

CHAPTER XVI. 
The Cowboy 123 

CHAPTER XVII. 
Tricky Fellows . . . . . . .129 

CHAPTER XVIII. 
Dangerous Fellows 140 

CHAPTER XIX. 
Train and Land Robbers . . . . .148 

CHAPTER XX. 
Lonely Traveling i55 

CHAPTER XXI. 
The Changed Scene . . . . . -159 

CHAPTER XXII. 
The Unlucky Ranch 166 

CHAPTER XXIII. 
The Struggle 176 

CHAPTER XXIV. 
The Victory i79 

CHAPTER XXV. 
The Busy East 185 

CHAPTER XXVI. 
The Eastern Woman 19^ 

CHAPTER XXVII. 
The Marriage « . 204 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 
The Kyles of Bute . . . . • .211 



TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE PREPARATION. 

TDOSTON is a busy city where every one 
^^ is on the rush after the golden ox, 
knocking you right and left as you attempt 
to walk the streets. I therefore left the 
jostling crowd one day recently and retired 
to the Common, that is, the city park, and 
there for a while, beside a little lake, I sat 
looking at the chirping sparrows, playing 
children, and budding trees, when a man who 
was evidently a preacher joined me on the 
seat. His talk was so interesting in spots 
that I requested him to give me an outline 
of his life for publication, for I perceived 
that it might be instructive and interesting 
to the growing generations here in the East, 
seeing that the times and manners of life he 
referred to are fast passing away. 

9 



lO . TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

After considering the matter a little, he 
agreed to do so, and this is what he said : 

Perhaps before complying with your re- 
quest I had better tell you the fate of all 
papers which have published what I gave 
them. Out in Nevada, nearly thirty years 
ago, an editor there asked me to contribute 
weekly articles for Sunday reading, as I was 
a little behind with my subscription and had 
neither wood nor watermelons to bring him. 
That editor left town the following week. 
My first article appeared on Saturday, and 
on Monday he quietly folded his tent and 
stole away, Arab-like. Down in Texas, some 
twenty years ago, an editor requested me to 
give him some religious articles for the edifi- 
cation of his readers, and I had only given 
him two or three when his only cow jumped 
over a bluff and broke her neck, his wife 
went crazy, the poor man skipped between 
two suns, and the last seen of him he was 
heading for the North Pole. 

In Washington city another of the brother- 
hood asked me to help fill up his columns 
with my best thoughts on the moral and 



THE PREPARATION. I I 

political aspects of the country at large, and 
his poor Bird of Freedom expired in great 
agony after swallowing my first article, and 
the sheriff took the carcass when the spirit 
fled. In Fall River, here in Massachusetts, 
the Tribune got to publishing my sermons 
on Labor and Capital every Monday morn- 
ing, and the electricity went out of it, and 
the people are without their Tribune till this 
day. If you publish therefore what I tell 
you, you will please caution the editor before- 
hand, for I do not wish any one any harm. 

If I am to tell you anything in a connected 
form, I may as well begin at the beginning. 
Each mortal life is a distinct unit, and you 
cannot understand it unless you begin at the 
start. 

The day of the week, the month of the 
year, or the year of our Lord in which I came 
to this mundane sphere, I do not recollect. 
I remember, however, that there was a great 
hubbub outside and inside the parental home 
on the occasion. Outside the dogs barked 
and the neighbors shouted to each other, 
"Did you hear the news?" Inside there 
were general congratulations. I observed 



12 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

certain old women present who must have 
followed the business of prophesying, for 
they told all sorts of things that would 
happen to me on the journey just started. 
Some of them, too, were so advanced in 
their profession as to tell what sort of a man 
I would be. One benevolent old granny 
said, " He '11 be a good man ! " Another 
said, "I'll wager you he'll be a soldier; 
look at his fists ! " And another said, " He '11 
cross the seas and have many ups and downs 
in life ; his friends will be much attached to 
him, and his enemies will be as malicious as 
old Nick." One old visitor took a peep at me, 
who seemed wiser than the rest, and shook 
her head, saying as she did so, *' I '11 bet you 
a penny he '11 be a mixed sort of a beaver ! " 
Thus they discoursed in their knowing way, 
and I wondered much at their talk. 

A brother, who had just learned to wag his 
tongue, asked one of the old ladies present, 
"Where do babies come from?" "Hush, 
child," she replied, " but since you have asked 
it, I will tell you. They come down from 
heaven." That question being satisfactorily 
answered, another was propounded by the 



THE PREPARATION. 1 3 

same inquisitive relation : '* Why do babies 
have red faces?" The question seemed to 
stagger the old lady for a moment, but she 
was equal to the occasion and replied : *' My 
little man must not ask such questions, but 
I will answer you just once more. Babies 
have red faces because they get awfully 
scorched when passing down by the blazing 
sun. Now run out and play, that 's a good 
boy." 

After a few weeks my parents took me to 
church, and, holding me up before a man I 
had never seen before, water was poured 
upon my face. I was a meek and submissive 
child up to this point, but I thought it now 
high time to assert myself, and I kicked and 
screamed, so much so, indeed, that all pres- 
ent were glad when I was taken outside. 
I did not know then what it all meant, but I 
have learned since, and I am glad they did 
this thing to me, otherwise I would have 
grown up a heathen. The good man in the 
pulpit called me '' Ralph." Had I been born 
in France they would have called me '' De 
Ralph," or in Wales, " Ralphwzmlpp," but 
I am glad that I was born in a Christian 



14 TWENTY- FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

country. As I grew up I was sent to school, 
and the teacher used to dust my coat quite 
often. I did not complain of this, for a 
healthy boy needs a healthy dusting once in 
a while, and I was healthy. But one day the 
teacher, who was a great big fellow, whipped 
a little girl that I had a sort of fondness for, 
and I struck him. More than my coat was 
dusted that day, and when my father exam- 
ined my back at night he saw ridges like the 
Blue Ridge of Virginia all over my back. I 
never went to that school again. 

Some years after I wanted to be a preacher, 
but it was a daring thing for a poor boy at 
four dollars a week to think of going to 
college. Dukes and lords might send their 
sons there, but who was I or my generation 
that I should seek such exaltation ? The 
sons of the nobility in my native land were 
at that time usually divided into three classes ; 
the brave ones went into the army, the lazy 
ones into the navy, and the fools into the 
church. 

I, however, entered college, for I seemed, 
to myself at least, to have beautifully com- 
bined in me all of the three different ele- 



THE PREPARATION. 1 5 

ments that went, with a few others, to make 
up the greatest nation on earth. Well, the 
first thing- they required of me there was to 
get a cap with a square board on top of it ; 
that was to show my classmates that my head 
was level ; also a red gown that was to show 
the rabble on the street that I belonged 
to the noble army of orators who made the 
Roman Forum ring with their eloquence in 
days of old. 

Many years of weary work followed. 
Young men preparing themselves for the 
gospel ministry in this country know but 
little of the privations of a poor student 
where I came from, for here there is so 
much done for them by their parents and 
by the charitably rich. I had to pay my 
way through college, without a cent from 
any outside source whatever. To accom- 
plish this I worked in a store till nine o'clook 
at night, and then studied till two in the 
morning. 

But the struggle was more than I could 
endure through the theological course, and 
I came across the ocean to this country at 
the close of the war, believing that, after 



1 6 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

the terrible number of people killed, there 
would be room somewhere here for a fellow 
like me. 

I went to work on a farm in New Jersey, 
and good, kind people there promised me 
aid if I continued my studies, which I did, 
and so in course of time I was made a 
reverend, and ever since they call me 
" Parson Ralph Riley." 

, I am very glad now of my hard preparation 
for the ministry, in view of my twenty-five 
years in the wild West. I am glad of it also 
because I am now fast reaching that period 
in life when I am not wanted. In my native 
land ministers, like wine, improve with age, 
but somehow the churches do not think so 
in this country. But while I am blessed with 
good health I can go back to the farm or the 
store again, and so I am independent as a 
king. The most helpless, most hopeless, and 
most useless of men livinpf is the minister 
who, in his declining years, is not wanted by 
the churches, and who, in the days of his 
youth, has failed to acquire something more 
than mere book learning. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE START. 

" I "HE wise men who put a prefix to my 
-^ name had an affix to their own as well 
as a prefix ; but they did not give me that, 
they kept it for themselves. When I asked 
for it they said it meant a great deal after 
their name, but it would mean nothing after 
mine. Therefore, thankfully taking what I 
got, I went out from their presence and got 
for myself a good dinner, — the first in ten 
years, — for I felt that to begin preaching 
aright a good dinner was of more real value 
than all the ecclesiastical titles imaginable 
fore and aft to my name. Dr. Talmage was 
right when he said: "Give your preacher 
beefsteak through the week, and he will give 
you beefsteak on Sunday ! " So was the old 
darky who thus prayed for his new minister : 
" O Lord, feed him with the heavenly 
manna, and we will feed him on chicken, 
hog, and hominy ! " 



1 8 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

Dinner over, I took my old Hebrew, 
Greek, and Latin lexicons and all their kin 
to a second-hand bookstore and sold them 
for money, having found them to be very 
full of contrarieties when we roosted together 
in garrets. Still, I could not help dropping 
a tear as I handed them over the counter, 
saying as I did so : — 

" Fare thee well ! and if forever, 
Still forever fare thee well." 

With the money I got for my old books I 
went to a tailor and arrayed myself for the 
first time in clerical garments. Oh, the in- 
toxication of that supreme hour ! When I 
looked at myself in the mirror I felt that I 
was indeed a *' son of thunder," and would 
surely turn the world upside down if I got a 
good chance at it. Will that day never come 
back again ? Will the bright visions of suc- 
cess now return no more ? Is all the bliss- of 
yon hour clean gone forever ? Alas ! what 
dreams we are made of. 

But the whistle blows, and the sailors shout, 
" All on board ! " and I am on a big steamer 
going to the Isthmus of Panama. The pas- 
sengers on board were a mixed multitude 



THE START. 1 9 

from all parts, and were going- to all parts of 
the world. When we got fairly out on the 
great sea a furious storm sprung up. A 
storm at sea is a sublime thing. I do not 
know of anything in nature's wide realm so 
grand. The waves roaring like thunder, and 
the winds howling the chorus, make music 
between them that is inspiring ; that is, if 
you are ready to die. For a day or so things 
looked shaky for us, and we were all made to 
stay below. An infidel was present, and he 
did not like the idea of going into the other 
world by water, and he confessed to me, for 
we were both in the same stateroom, that if 
the good Lord only gave him another chance 
on dry land he would become a Christian and 
teach in Sunday-school. If the recording 
angel took note of all the good things condi- 
tionally promised in that storm, it must be 
interesting reading. 

By giving the sailors a pull at the ropes, 
and perhaps a plug of tobacco on occasion, 
we got to be on very gracious terms with 
them, and they would tell us sea yarns by 
the hour. 

One day while sailing along the coast of 



20 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

Cuba, the sea was smooth and nothing spe- 
cially doing, some of us thought it might be a 
good thing to put Jack's truthfulness to the 
test, and asked him to relate to us the most 
wonderful thing he ever witnessed at sea. 
A pause for a while followed and a feeling 
around in memory's storehouse for the right 
goods. 

Then was told this, in all seriousness : 
" Many years ago I was on board the Dora 
of Boston, on a homeward voyage from the 
West Indies. One calm Sunday evening, 
when off the coast of New Jersey and we 
were about to retire for prayers, we saw a 
great black cloud approaching us from the 
shore. The skipper was in a perfect stew 
over it, for he could not make out what it 
was. It could not be a balloon, for it was too 
large for that ; it could not be a thunder- 
cloud, for the barometer did not indicate any 
change of weather. Some of the supersti- 
tious thought there was something super- 
natural about it. But on and on came the 
black monster, and when we were all beside 
ourselves with terror, it struck us a few feet 
above deck and carried away every stitch of 



THE START. 2 1 

canvas from the masts. And what do you 
think it was ? Why, a cloud of New Jersey 
mosquitoes ! " A vote being taken, it was 
unanimously agreed not to believe the story 
unless it was corroborated by some one else. 
This was soon forthcoming from a brother tar, 
and here it is : ''I remember that mosquito 
cloud very well. I was on board the ship 
Ocean Wave, and on that Sunday night was 
about twenty miles northeast from where the 
Dora was, and as sure as I am telling it, if 
that terrible cloud did not pass over us and 
every mosquito in it had on canvas pants." 
That settled it. But when we talked over 
the matter by ourselves we expressed our 
concern for the spiritual and moral condition 
of our sailor boys. One lady said that they 
were the biggest liars she had ever met. 
'' It is just awful," said she, '' to think of it, 
that our lives are intrusted to such a crew." 
Another lady wondered if there was n't a 
minister on board who would talk to them. 
It was now my turn to speak. Up to this 
point I told no one who I was, but I felt 
now that I must unbosom myself. To keep 
my light under a bushel in the midst of such 



2 2 TWENTY- FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

darkness was cowardly. That was not all ; I 
had never preached a sermon before, and 
now was my chance to practise a little to see 
how it would go. My audience could not 
criticise me very much, for they would be 
getting what I had to give for nothing, at 
any rate. If I blundered or broke down 
altogether, we would soon scatter and for- 
get all about it. So I stepped out, and with 
a bow said: "Ladies, I am the man you wish 
for ; I am the Reverend Ralph Riley, going 
to preach to the heathen Californians ; but 
it strikes me that I might begin the good 
work right here." This made everybody 
glad, but one lady began to reproach me 
for not comforting them during the storm. 
"Ah, madam!" said I, "I needed all the 
comfort I could spare for myself." 

This was on Saturday, and arrangements 
were made for my holding forth on the mor- 
row. Just a little before the hour of service 
a lady was seen running up and down the 
cabin saloon wringing her hands and crying, 
" Oh, my jewels and my money ! Somebody 
stole my valise. I am a ruined woman, and 
far from home among strangers ! Oh, my 



THE START. 23 

jewels and my money ! " Every one expressed 
the greatest sympathy for her, of course, and 
promised to help hunt up the thief. When 
about to begin worship, the distressed woman 
came up close to me and whispered, '' Preach 
on stealing." ''All right, madam," I replied, 
and began loading my gun for the bird 
wanted. I had for an audience before me 
sailors, stewards, steerage and cabin passen- 
gers. It was a mixed lot I had to preach to, 
and I took for my theme the place that liars 
and thieves go to when they leave this world. 
I described the terrible region in the most 
awful colors imaginable, and the more realis- 
tic I got the more pleased my lady friend 
seemed to be, and I could hear her say now 
and then, "That's it, give it to him! Bless 
the Lord ! " I had the impression that one of 
the black stewards stole the lost jewels and 
money, and I pictured how Satan would roast 
the faithless, thieving servant who would steal 
from helpless passengers their property. 

Perhaps my gun was not of polished steel, 
but it brought down the game I was after. 
The story-telling sailors whispered as they 
passed out that the mosquito yarn was not 



24 TWENTY- FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

true, and the black thief went to the lady's 
stateroom that night and handed her the lost 
valise, saying as he did so, " Pardon me, 
madam, and for God's sake don't tell the 
captain ! " 

On crossing the isthmus our one-horse 
railroad broke down, and for four mortal 
hours we had to endure the. horrors of thirst 
under a broiling sun. There was not a 
breath of air stirring, and there in the jungle 
we were stewed till we were all as dry as a 
cork. We all felt that if the valley we were in 
was not the valley of Tophet, we were not far 
from it. It was not a pleasant experience, 
I assure you, when not a drop of water could 
be got for love or money. At last, when we 
felt that water must be procured or we would 
all go crazy, a band of young men started 
in search of the precious liquid, regardless 
of savage-looking natives, wild beasts, or 
crocodiles. What will a man not risk when 
the throat is parched and the blood on fire ! 
Water, blessed water, '* it cooleth the lip, it 
cooleth the brain." 

After an hour's search our daring youths 
returned with a bucketful of the much- 



THE START. 25 

desired liquid, and as diey approached the 
train cheer after cheer rang out from one car 
after another, but, oh, the dismay caused at 
the sight of the stuff in the bucket ! Both 
flavor and appearance were simply disgust- 
ing. Some of the ladies tried to weep, but 
there was not moisture enough in their 
bodies to form even one little tear. Could 
nothing be done to help the situation ? 
Yes ; I had something in my satchel — a 
bottle of French brandy — which I was ad- 
vised to take for just such an emergency ; 
but could I produce it in the presence of my 
fellow-passengers ? Up to now I did not 
require to do any mixing in rotten water, but 
surely if the law and the gospel allowed such 
a thing, now was the time to do it. I was in 
a quandary for a little. Impulse said, " Give 
it to them ; pour it in the bucket." Prudence 
said, " Don't you do it. They will say you 
are a tippling preacher. 

" ' Aye free off han' your story tell, 
When wi' a bosom crony, 
But still keep something to yoursel' 
Ye scarcely tell to ony.' " 

The internal struggle prevailed in favor 



26 TWENTY- FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

of mixing, and I rose up in my seat and 
said: '' Fellow-travelers, we are in a dry and 
parched condition, and there is no telling 
when this thing is going to end. The un- 
holy looking stuff in the bucket may be good 
enough for the heathen natives of this 
godless country, but for us, who are from the 
States and accustomed to drink from the 
springs that run among the hills, or from 
the old wooden buckets that sit by the wells 
of the fathers, it is not safe unless we put 
something in it." 

''Amen, the parson is right!" shouted a 
brother at the end of the car. "That he is, 
indeed," chimed in an old chap just in front 
of me, whose eyes were sparkling with 
expectation." 

" In my satchel," I continued, " ladies and 
gentlemen, there is a bottle of brandy. It is 
reported good for bad water and snake bites, 
I am disposed, however, to risk the water 
and the snakes of California and to mix it 
in this loathsome stuff, if you are willing to 
drink it afterwards." Three cheers for the 
parson followed, and the brandy was poured 
in the bucket and stirred with a stick. Then 



THE START. 27 

addressing my fellow-travelers again, I said : 
" You know that heathen male bodies drink 
and eat first, and if there is anything left 
over, the female bodies get it. But we will 
show a better example of good manners to 
the heathen hereabouts by giving the ladies 
to drink first. So take the bucket to the 
first car on the train and keep on to the last, 
and what the ladies do not drink we will." 

Alas ! there 's many a slip between the 
cup and the lip. When the ladies had all 
sipped there was not a drop left to moisten 
the masculine lip or to cheer the masculine 
heart. It was a woeful disappointment, and 
some of those men would come to me 
and say, " Parson Riley, have n't you got 
another ? " 

No ; I had only one, and I am now 
glad that I gave it away as I did, for through 
all my wanderings since on this continent I 
have never yet come to a place where I could 
not get plenty of good water that needed 
no mixing, and as for the snakes they have 
never given me the least trouble. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE WORK. 

/^N arriving at San Francisco I entered 
^^ into the work of the ministry with no 
small enthusiasm. I was given, however, a 
very hard field to work in ; that is, I was 
given a church building perched on the side 
of a rocky hill about a mile beyond the 
suburbs of the city and about half a mile 
from the nearest dwelling. Talmage himself 
could n't draw a baker s dozen in such a 
place. I soon saw through the motives of 
the builders. It was not the spirit of the 
gospel, but the spirit of real-estate specula- 
tion that erected yon beautiful church. I 
have often since wondered if the city has yet 
reached out to my old church on the portrero 
where I used to practise oratory six days in 
the week, and ring the bell on Sundays just 
to scare the rabbits. The spirit of specu- 
lation was rampant on the coast in those 
days, and if it could have reached up high 

28 



THE WORK. 29 

enough it would have scooped in the New 
Jerusalem 

Religion was *' mighty scattering " in the 
city by the Golden Gate when I was there, 
and I attributed this, to some extent at least, 
to the fleas of the place. Go where you 
would, in millionaire's palace or the hut of 
the lowly toiler, the lively flea was there by 
the bushel, and very persistent in his atten- 
tions to your anatomy. I have seen the 
housewife, while in conversation, reach for 
her broom and sweep the little pests by the 
million dancing to the street. It is very sin- 
gular, but true, nevertheless, that where the 
fleas are plentiful religion is scarce. Go to 
Palestine, for instance. 

I attributed also the lack of religion on 
the Pacific Coast to the fact that all the peo- 
ple there went to get gold, and when they 
got It they lost their religion, and when they 
did not it was all the same. But I suppose 
in this respect most newly settled countries 
are alike. There the restraints of religion 
and refined society are cast to the winds, and 
as a man feels within so he acts without. 

The best place in all the world to study 



30 TWENTY- FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

human nature is on the frontier. A minister 
of the gospel has special advantages, too, for 
this. It is said that the doctor knows people 
as they are, but the parson as they would 
like to be. On the frontiers of civilization, 
however, the parson, too, knows them as 
they are, for there as a man thinketh in his 
heart so is he. The doctor may know the 
anatomy of a man, but the parson generally 
finds out the nobility and meanness, the 
worth and the worthlessness, of those with 
whom he associates ; therefore he sees much 
to laugh at and also much to weep at. 

For a young preacher the frontier is the 
place for him. As a rule, when he starts out 
to preach he thinks himself very wise and 
able to do mighty things against Satan. He 
finds out after a time that the " race is not to 
the swift, nor the battle to the strong." The 
hardened, wicked world is a stern reality, and 
strutting about like a peacock in the sunshine, 
and talking wisely to people who know as 
much as you do about mysteries, is disap- 
pointing. I was a fair sample of the young 
preacher myself when I started out in the 
clerical life, but the frontier soon took the 
conceit out of me. It will do it every time. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE INDIANS. 

T YING between the Rocky Mountains 
^-^ and the Sierra Nevada range, which 
skirts the eastern boundary of California, 
is the great American Desert. In about the 
centre of that desert I went and fixed my 
headquarters along the newly opened rail- 
way, built a church and hung a bell in the 
tower of it. 

That was the country of the Shoshone In- 
dians, whom Joaquin Miller speaks of as 
" the true Bedouins of the American desert," 
the " roving and treacherous tribe of perfect 
savages, . . . having no real habitation, or 
any regard for the habitation of others." 
O Joaquin, poet of the Sierras, how can you 
say so ? I know the Shoshones well. I have 
eaten in their camps, fished in the Humboldt 
with them, and danced at their moon and 
spring dances. We have sung and laughed 
together. When they first heard the music 



32 'RVENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

of my bell, the first to waken the echoes of 
the great and dreary desert, they came to me 
and inquired what it was and why it was, and 
when I told them it was to call the palefaces 
to the worship of the Great Spirit, they asked 
in wonder if the palefaces did so ; and when 
I told them they did, they were glad. Happy 
children of the desert, I love to think of you ! 
True and faithful ye were to me when I was 
sick. Ye had no medicine from the apothe- 
cary's, but ye brought me fish from the river 
and wild fowl from the hills. How I love to 
go back to you on memory's wing, and to 
hear you relate to me over again the brave 
deeds of your tribe in the days of long ago 
when the red man roamed at will, his horse 
drank clear water, and his dog fed on deer 
and buffalo. Oh, how you laughed when I 
told you of the deeds of my fathers away 
over the great waters where the mountains 
are black and wild, and where the ancient 
warriors went forth to battle, cheered by the 
stirring strains of the pibroch ! 

Ah ! Joaquin Miller, your Shasta Indians 
may be altogether lovely in your eyes, but 
you did not know the Shoshones. 



THE INDIANS. 33 

But Eastern people, too, imagine that these 
uncivilized Indians are a barbarous lot. I did 
not find them so. They had some good 
points, and a wonderful faith in the Great 
Spirit. Sitting around their blazing fires at 
night they would tell with the artlessness of 
a child how the Great Spirit made the world 
and the living creatures on it ; only one 
speaking at a time. '* Paleface no under- 
stand," they would say. " Paleface, he not 
know Great Spirit." Then with babelike 
simplicity they would relate how all came 
about. '' Great Spirit make hole in the blue 
sky. Threw down earth and great stones. 
Heap earth and stone reach up to the clouds. 
Great Spirit no pleased. He put his foot 
on it and spread it out. Then he planted 
trees and flowers and grass. He no pleased 
how trees, flowers, grass grow. He say, ' I 
will rain water.' Then the rivers and the 
lakes came, and the deer and the birds and 
the buffalo. He no pleased and say, ' No 
man to hunt buffalo, no man to dance and 
sing.' Then Great Spirit make red man 
and red woman, papooses grow, walk over 
the great mountains, meet grizzly bear, meet 



34 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

panther, meet wild sea waves, papooses turn 
palefaces." 

Spoil their simple story by mine ? No, I 
could not. Well, there was in the village a 
large, brave, noble-looking Indian, who had 
long served the troops on the plains as a 
scout. Man-with-the-eagle-wing was a kind, 
good-hearted fellow, and as tender to his 
wife and only little daughter as any white 
man ever lived. Their little tent of skins 
was just big enough for themselves — three. 
It was no palace, but peace and mutual love 
were there. Little Prairie Flower would some- 
times go down to the river bank to gather 
berries or wild blossoms from the overhang- 
ing trees ; then her father, Man-with-the- 
eagle-wing, would watch her with his eagle 
eye from his tent door above. Wherever she 
went she was the apple of his eye and the 
joy of his heart. But her head burned hot 
one day in his arms, and her spirit went away 
suddenly as when the morning sun looks 
down on the dewdrop in the flower's cup. 
The heartrending grief of those red parents 
of the forest I shall never forget. Their 
tears, their wild wailings in their own Ian- 



THE INDIANS. 35 

guage, their upward looks to heaven, were 
the very incarnation of sorrow. The mother 
pined away and died within a month. Man- 
with-the-eagle-wing was a sad, broken-hearted 
creature now. He would eat nothing, but 
weep ; he would utter no word, but between 
sobs. Finally he left his tent and village and 
lived all by himself without food and almost 
naked, for he decorated the graves of his 
loved ones with his own clothing, about three 
miles away up along the river under the thick 
shadows of the woods there. After a whole 
week in this condition he made his way to 
my house, a few miles farther up the Hum- 
boldt, and when I looked on him I did not 
know him. Despair was stamped deep, deep 
upon his face. When I clothed, fed, and 
comforted him I sent him home to his own 
village, and in about a week called down to 
see him, and meeting Rain-in-the-face I 
asked him how was Man-with-the-eagle-wing. 
He simply pointed up and westward. 

Man-with-the-eagle-wing had winged his 
way upward and westward to the region of 
the setting sun, where his darling wife and 
child had gone before him. He died of a 



36 TWENTY- FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

broken heart. Who dare say that these sim- 
ple children of the desert shall not be in the 
great multitude around the throne on high, 
redeemed from all nations and tribes of earth ? 

Those red-skinned people, too, were 
charming singers. I have heard some of the 
most famous singers, black and white, but I 
have never listened to such melodious music 
from the lips of any other mortals as I have 
from the lips of Indian maidens. Far down 
the Allawana I strayed one hot day to preach 
to a small settlement of whites. I was over- 
come by the heat and lay down under the 
shade of a cedar tree for a quiet nap. 

Just as I was about to close my eyes an 
Indian girl, a sweet, round-faced creature 
about sixteen, clothed in skins and her black, 
long hair streaming down behind her back, 
began to sing pathetically on the other side of 
the softly flowing Allawana. She gathered 
berries, too, as she sung, and put them into a 
little basket made from the tall, slender reeds 
which grew on the banks of the river. As 
she sung and picked, she looked at me over 
the water, and her great black eyes were like 
Autumn weeping at the departure of Sum- 



THE INDIANS. 37 

mer. She picked and she sung while she 
looked at me over the flowing river as if she 
loved me or pitied me. I did not know what 
she sung about, but the music of her voice 
was like the bursting of a sigh into a song. 
Perhaps it was the outward expression of an 
inward feeling of sorrow for the wrongs of 
the white man against her people ; perhaps it 
was only a heart whisper that she sent to a 
lover in the dark shade behind her in meas- 
ured accents. At any rate, it was a native 
song that she sung. I do not know how the 
angels look or sing in heaven, but it seemed 
to me as if this little red-skinned maiden of 
the desert was an angel, and I was overcome 
by a great and peculiar feeling in my heart 
such as I never before experienced, or since. 
In Nevada, Texas, and elsewhere I have 
always found the Indians generous and thor- 
oughly reliable, if you treated them right. 
Right treatment, however, is something, 
which, as a rule, they were strangers to, 
both at the hands of the invaders of their 
territory, the pioneers, and the government 
officials. The Father of all men will yet 
judge this nation for its treatment of the 
Indians. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE HOTELS. 

ON going from California to Nevada I first 
realized the discomforts of a frontier 
hotel. The hotels of San Francisco, even 
thirty years ago, outrivaled those of New 
York. Going from one of them to a 
Nevada hotel was like leaving a Pullman 
palace car for a donkey cart. I shall long 
remember my experience in one among the 
Sierra Mountains. It was in the centre of 
a mining village, and was one of those hotels 
that might honestly have the sign '' Board- 
ers " over the door, for it was all boards 
together. The sides, the roof, the floor, and 
the partitions were made of boards. Some 
of the boards, too, were two or three inches 
apart. No doubt this was not to economize 
in lumber, but to let in to us — the boarders 
— the balmy air that came floating up from 
the valleys of California, fragrant with the 
perfume of roses as that of Arabia the blest. 

38 



THE HOTELS. 39 

The bedsteads were made of boards too, 
and the mattresses were very near it ; that 
is, they were made of corn husks. I lay me 
down on one of these one night and tried 
hard to sleep, but could not There were 
corn cobs among the husks as large as those 
which grow in Kansas, and my rest was 
broken. Rising up I procured a pick and 
grubbed awhile, just as you see a farmer 
do when he is adding to his fields from the 
woodland. When I grubbed mv patch and 
evened it out, I laid down on it again to 
sleep. But just as I was about to tumble 
over into the arms of Morpheus, a man and 
a woman came in below, as I could see and 
hear through the openings between the 
board floor. Bidding the woman good night 
and wishing her many happy dreams in the 
Sierras, the man came upstairs and went to 
bed beside his wife in the next room to 
mine. There was nothing said for an hour 
or so, but the spouse was nursing her wrath 
to keep it warm for him. Then in a hard, 
determined voice she said : ** Say, John, did 
you think I did not hear you downstairs ? 
Who was that woman you came in with ? " 



40 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

'' My dear," said John, " that was Miss 
Swan, the great Nova Scotia giantess, who 
is going to exhibit here to-morrow night. 
She's just in with the train, and, O Jane, I 
wish you could see her ! She is ten feet 
high, and O Jerusalem ! such face and 
arms as she has got ! Why, Jane, her face 
is like the full moon and as beautiful as the 
snow on Mount Shasta ; and as for her arms, 
they are as thick and as big as the trees of 
Yosemite ! O Jane, there 's glory in our 
town to-night ! " 

" Shut up, you fool ! " said Jane. John 
was a mild man, and he shut up. He 
clerked in a store, and on occasions acted 
as a local Methodist preacher. Then there 
was another long silence, when the same 
dry, feminine voice again broke the stillness 
of the night, asking, "John, why did the 
landlady say to you yesterday, ' Don't 
squeeze my hand so,' and why did you 
say, ' Beg your pardon, dear ; we are all 
human ' ? Tell me that, if you can. Did 
you think I did n't hear you ? " 

Somewhat hesitatingly John replied : ''Jane, 
don't get angry. When she told me that she 



THE HOTELS. 4 1 

would score out the old bill against us, I was 
so overjoyed that I grasped her hand and 
shook it, and when she said, ' Don't run up 
another, pay as you go,' I said, ' We are all 
human ' (that is, me and you), ' and liable to 
fall behind again.' " 

- Was that all ? " 

'' Yes, that was all." 

Another long pause, and the same voice, 
questioning John, said, " Who was that you 
went home with on your arm Thursday night 
from prayer-meeting ? " 

" Go to sleep, you long-eared, lynx-eyed 
triangle and don't bother me," said John. 

Then burst upon the boards and boarders 
of that board hotel a high old time. It was 
fast and furious, and kept up till morning, 
when she took the early train to Frisco and 
John the first east-bound to Colorado. 

" O wad some power the giftie gie us 
To see oursels as ithers see us ! 
It wad frae mony a blunder free us, 
And foolish notion." 

On the frontier of Texas the hotels were, 
if anything, even worse than in Nevada, and 
were generally run by a class of people that 



42 TWENTY- FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

neither feared God nor man. Many a weary 
night I slept in them when I wished myself 
on the highest peak of the Rockies. 

Going to one of the Northwestern coun- 
tries far out on the frontier when I went into 
that State from Washington city, I reached 
my destination wearied and dusty. It was 
late at night and I entered a hotel kept by 
an old man and woman that knew nothing of 
the corrupting ways of civilization. They 
were just lovely to behold, the one smoking 
an old cob pipe, and the other dipping snuff. 
On signing my name and where I came from 
in an old book, the landlady peered at me for 
a while and said, " Wall, stranger, I 've seed 
folks as comes here stuck to thar name, D.D., 
M.D., and LL.D., but what in the name of 
blue blazes does D.C. mean ? " I explained 
to her that it stood for the District of Colum- 
bia, where Washington city was, up North. 
" I guess that 's whar Andrew Jackson used 
to be President," she replied. I said, '' Yes." 
'' And what did you do up North that you 
come down here ? " was her next pointed ques- 
tion. " Did you steal something?" ''No." 
''Did you burst a bank .^ " "No." "Did 



THE HOTELS. 43 

you kill somebody ? " " No." " Perhaps 
you 're missloner then." '' Now you have it, 
old lady." ''Then pay your bill and go up- 
sta'rs." I paid and went upstairs and to bed. 
I did not sleep, however, for a long time, 
wondering whether I had better preach or 
herd sheep in Texas. Next morning, on 
coming down, I asked her why she demanded 
my bill so snappishly, seeing that I had bag- 
gage enough to secure her interest in me. 
''Wall, stranger," said she, "you see that old 
man of mine out thar with a face on him as 
red as a beet ? " I said, " Yes." " Wall, he 's 
an old possum, he is. He 's mighty religious 
when he 's a-fishing for a drunk, and he always 
gets drunk when a missioner comes about, 
for he gits the money out of him afore I git 
it. I don't like missioners about, for my old 
man gits religion from them, an' the money 
for their board, an' then he gits drunk. 
Three things that roils me mightily. I tried 
onced to send him over the river to Peter ; 
I failed. I went to Fort Worth and bought a 
barrel of chain-lightning whiskey that would 
burn the heart out o' a hundred-year-old 
alligator, an' I says to him, ' Thar, drink that 



44 TWENTY- FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

and go to h — ,' and he sot down beside that 
barrel for weeks and weeks until he drank it 
dry, and upon my soul if he did n't fatten on 
it like a hog eatin' yeller corn. He did, the 
old coon ! and I wish that I could get rid of 
him somehow. He axes me to go to Fort 
Worth agin, but I guess I won't. Say, 
missioner, don't you give him ony money, or 
religion either, for he '11 take 'em both to the 
saloon." 

The frontier hotels have much to do in the 
making of reckless wild men. All the envi- 
ronments are bad. The beds, the food, and 
the guests, to say nothing of the proprietors, 
are of a class to make a man sigh for " home, 
sweet home." 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE BLUNDERING. 

\17HEN I began preaching in Nevada I 
^ ^ used to preach very learnedly on the 
various duties and doctrines, and I would be 
told that it was veal I gave them for solid 
meat, and I think so now myself, for they did 
not seem to fatten on what I gave them, 
speaking figuratively. I doubt if it was 
even decent veal. I think it was but grass, 
and so green that were the cows to get hold 
of some of my sermons I fear they would 
eat them by mistake. 

Blundering, too, was a failing of mine, and 
my people out yonder were not slow to tell 
me of it. 

Shortly after I put on my clerical harness, 
I was asked to marry a young couple. Before 
going to tie the knot I practised on my land- 
lady and her husband till I thought I had the 
thing down fine. Then going to the house 
where the wedding was to take place with 



46 TWENTY- FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

swelling thoughts of my official importance, 
I returned from it wishing that I could creep 
into'the smallest rat hole in creation. I made 
a terrible fool of myself. It was my first 
effort at the business of making two one, 
and I don't know to this day what I made of 
them at all. I forgot all that I should have 
said, and said everything that I should not. 
I made the young people, too, feel very bad, 
I am sure, for they seemed as if they were 
on hot irons while I was making them prom- 
ise each other all sorts of things that were 
neither of heaven nor earth, law nor gospel. 
Then, to crown all, the bridegroom handed 
me a ring to be given in proper form, and, 
goose that I was, did n't I go and put it on 
the bride's finger myself, saying as I did so, 
"With this ring I thee wed; with all my 
worldly goods I thee endow," thinking of 
course that the brideo^room would follow me ? 
but he did n't, because I put the ring on 
instead of himself. No wonder he looked 
daggers at me and did n't pay me anything 
for my trouble either. 

Some laughed, and I don't blame them ; 
and when I got outside the house there was 



THE BLUNDERING. 47 

an explosion of merriment at my expense, 
and I don't wonder at it. I sought comfort 
from my landlady, but she said, " Oh, you 
dunce! you married the girl to yourself in- 
stead of to the other fellow ! " 

Widow Black lived on a farm, and I made 
her mad as a roaring Niagara with my first 
funeral sermon. I was called to her house 
to preach the funeral sermon of her dead son. 
I never saw either before, for they did not 
belong to my church, and as she was heavily 
veiled in mourning I could not see her face. 
I imagined she was an old woman about 
seventy, and in my sympathy for her I prayed 
to the good Lord to be a husband to the 
aged widow according to his promise, and 
give her comfort to bear up under her sore 
affliction, and that in her declining years she 
might be comforted from on high. I went 
the day after to see her at her home, and she 
slammed the door in my face, calling me 
a fool of a preacher. On my way home, 
wondering what I had done, I met Deacon 
Willoughby, and he said : " Parson, you missed 
the right trail yesterday. Widow Black says 
you run her stock down fifty per cent, by 



48 TWENTY- FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

praying for her the way you did, as a decHn- 
ing old woman. Parson, you must have more 
horse sense ; that is the buxomest young 
widow on this 'ere coast, and all the bucks 
round are breaking their necks after her, for 
she has a mighty nice pile, she has." 

Blundering again, yes, blundering again, 
and at a funeral too, and almost got shot for 
it. They did not give me time to prepare the 
right thing, and they did not tell me properly 
who the dead man was. He committed sui- 
cide the night before, and they came to me to 
preach his funeral sermon, telling me to give 
their pard a grand send-off to the upper 
hunting grounds, for he was a royal fellow 
and no tenderfoot in the sagebrush of 
Nevada. He was a gambler, and when he 
lost all, he passed in his checks and gave the 
game up for good. He threw dirt from the 
last ditch, and now they wished him put away 
with Christian honors so as to please the old 
folks back East. From another source they 
gave me a very black record of the man 
whom I thought was in the coffin before me, 
and when I began to speak I got hold of 
the wrong sinner and preached his funeral 



THE BLUNDERING. 49 

sermon. He — the sinner — was present, 
too, and that made it dangerous. My refer- 
ences were so personal that everybody knew 
that I was on '' back of the wrong mule, on 
the wrong trail, and shooting at the wrong 
coon," as they said. If I had given my 
supposed suicide a good send-off, he would 
likely have taken it all right, but as I de- 
nounced gambling as a curse, and my sup- 
posed dead friend as the worst specimen 
of his class, his wrath boiled over and he 
sprung to his feet, pointing his revolver at 
me and shouting, " Don't shake me over 
hell that way, pard. Don't you do it, or I 
will blow your cabbage head into the next 
century ! " 

He then left his seat and went out, declar- 
ing as he did so that he would put daylight 
through my upper story when I put his chum 
away. 

When I got my breath, I made a few 
general remarks about the uncertainties of 
life and finished. Then at the grave I per- 
formed the remaining rites as softly as pos- 
sible, and went home with a brother Mason 
for a week or so till his rage blew over. 



50 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

What a blunder ! I preached the wrong 
man's funeral sermon. 

Shortly after I ventured out and was on 
my way to the postoffice when I spied the 
man whose bad reputation I proclaimed over 
the corpse of another, coming directly to- 
wards me. I confess that I thought of my 
own funeral and wondered who would preach 
the sermon. A cold sweat ran down my 
back, and my lips mechanically whistled a 
little tune ("The Campbells are coming") 
which I was wont to whistle when a boy to 
keep up my courage while passing along a 
lonely road at night where it was said un- 
canny things were seen and heard. When 
we met, he reached out his hand and said : 
" Parson, I apologize for my rudeness in 
your church, and I am glad now that I did 
not kill you ; but take my advice, young 
man, and never preach a funeral sermon 
like yon again. You fellows of the cloth 
imagine that all of our profession are going 
to the devil when we die, but perhaps we 
will stand as good a show as yourselves. 
At any rate', be wise as a serpent and harm- 
less as a dove when you preach our funeral 
sermons in Nevada." 



Y 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE GAMBLER. 

T HAVE never seen such another place for 
^ gamblers as Nevada was when I went 
there. They would have their gambling- 
tables even on the streets of its cities, and 
solicit the passers-by to take a hand. 

In one of those cities along the Central 
Pacific Railroad, about halfway between the 
Rockies and the Sierras, I built a church, 
the first erected from Omaha to Sacra- 
mento after the opening of the overland 
road. I received a bell for it from the 
Presbyterian church, Montclair, N. J., and 
when it began to ring the first Sabbath after 
it was placed in the steeple, a crowd of 
gamblers were just about to begin playing 
at their table on the street. The peals of 
the bell were too much for them. They 
could not stand it and took to their tent ; 
when the play was finished, according to 
an agreement made when they entered the 



52 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

tent, whoever won he was to go to church 
and put the stake in my collection box. So 
when in the middle of my sermon a dozen 
or so of the fraternity came in and sat down 
before me, I supposed that they were coming 
after me for another funeral sermon. But 
no, the winner had to give the stake money, 
which was quite large, and his chums came 
along to see that he did it. When the box 
went round a small sackful of gold and silver 
was emptied into it, and ever after there was 
no Sunday gambling on the street. 

Sometimes you would find a deal of native 
kindness among those professional players, 
and they were generous to a fault when you 
came upon the sunny side of their nature. 
Sitting with one of them one day at the 
church door, he got to telling me his life, and 
one incident in it I remember was this, which 
shows that he could be at times touched by 
a noble sentiment. It was when he was 
living among the gold diggers of the Sierras. 
Prowling about among the cabins of the 
miners one day, while they were at work, he 
stumbled on a pile of gold dust in one of 
them — almost half a bushel of it — and he 



THE GAMBLER. 53 

Stole it. On reaching his gambling den he 
looked around for a safe place to hide it in. 
Standing on his table and reaching up to the 
loft to clear a place for it among his old traps, 
books, and papers, he grasped a book which 
he had not seen for many years, and had in 
fact forgotten all about it, but it went among 
his other books with him from place to place 
in his ramblings among the mountains of the 
Pacific Coast. 

He opened it, and on the fly leaf was 
written, " From mother to her darling boy. 
May he be good and meet her in heaven ! " 
It was a Bible and a birthday present from 
his mother, who lived back in New England, 
but the hand was now cold in death that 
wrote the inscription. The light of other 
days now returned to him, and for the first 
time in twenty years he bent the knee in 
prayer and wept like a child over his sinful 
life. The stolen dust was returned to its 
place with a letter accompanying, telling 
about the theft and requesting that it be hid 
away in a safe place, lest he should steal 
again and skip. He could not, however, 
give up his profession, though he tried hard. 



54 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

There were some cunning rogues, too, 
among those Nevada gamblers. I remem- 
ber how nicely one of them got ten dollars 
from me. It was on a Sunday morning and 
after I had finished service in church. Com- 
ing out I found him sitting on the steps and 
crying very bitterly, with his face between 
his hands. '' You seem to be in great sor- 
row, my friend," I said to him. '' Oh, yes," 
he sobbed out, " my beautiful wife, my dearly 
beloved wife, has just died, and I have not 
a dollar to buy a coffin for her. I am a total 
stranger here and don't know what to do." 
" Ah," said I, " be comforted, the rose on 
the bush is beautiful, but the crushed rose 
in the hand is more fragrant. May this 
affliction make you to know the joyful sound 
of the gospel ! Take this ten-dollar bill and 
go about among our people, and tell them to 
add to it ten times or more." 

He left profusely thanking me, and in ten 
minutes after he was gambling with it, and 
never was married at all. 

It is exceedingly hard to lead a gambler 
away from his evil life, especially on the 
frontier where elevating and counteracting 



THE GAMBLER. 55 

influences are few and far between. There 
the passion for gambling easily gains the 
complete mastery over the mind, and when 
once this happens the gambler's associates 
are of a sort to make his enslavement per- 
petual. A striking instance of this came 
under my observation while assisting at a 
Methodist camp meeting in Northwestern 
Texas. I was preaching on the willingness 
of God to forgive sinners, and a notorious 
gambler of the place was moved to come 
forward and kneel at the mourners' bench. 
A thrill of joy seemed to pass through the 
audience when this hardened sinner was ap- 
parently about to change his life. Indeed, 
some of the more demonstrative Christians 
present almost lost control of themselves, so 
great was their pleasure. The man was 
earnestly and honestly seeking religion where 
he believed it could be found, when one of 
his associates crept under the platform on 
which the preachers were seated and held a 
pack of cards right under his face, saying as 
he did so in my hearing, " Come, old boy, 
and have a game." The temptation was too 
great to be resisted. The mourner arose, 



56 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

wiped the tears from his eyes, and followed 
his tempter into a quiet nook of the woods 
where he and a band of the fraternity played 
for money while the camp meeting lasted. 

Few, indeed, are they who return from the 
gambler's desert waste. They seem all to be 
carried down from deep to deep, till the sad 
story is ended in death. There is hope for 
the drunkard, but none for the confirmed 
gambler. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE MINER. 

^ I "HE old-time miner of the Pacific Coast 
^ was a rough, shaggy fellow, with hair 
on his teeth, as you found him wandering the 
mountains. He was from all parts of the 
world and had no home life anywhere. He 
never quarreled with his wife, for he had none 
to quarrel with. It would be years some- 
times ere he saw the face of a female, and 
when he did, that face would not be over- 
angelic. Anything of female attire in the 
camp was treasured as a jewel to be ex- 
hibited on special occasions. A lady's hat, 
for instance, found its way into a certain 
camp where a lady's form had never been 
seen, and the homesick fellows used to place 
it on a table in the centre of their camp on 
Saturday nights and dance around it. The 
coming of respectable women in the course 
of time, however, was the regeneration of 
those camps. I remember well the influence 

57 



58 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

for good that a lady from Chicago had on 
the rough miners of a certain place. She 
was refined in manner and good almost be- 
yond any I have ever met with anywhere 
else. When that lady walked on the streets 
every hat was lifted as she passed by, and 
the man that would dare to speak of her but 
in the most respectful language was treated 
with scorn. She was a Christian woman of 
the noblest type, and did more to elevate the 
town by her quiet, ladylike manners than all 
the other Christians in the State. 

When the roaming miner " struck it rich," 
he was the jolliest, most whole-souled mortal 
you could find on earth. He w.ould treat 
you to the best he had in his cabin, and 
before a blazing fire at night tell you of the 
joys that would be his when he returned 
home to the East, or over across the seas. 
He was always going home, but never went. 
If he started, he generally got "busted" in 
San Francisco. 

For several years I was bishop of all I sur- 
veyed in the Sierras and on the hot dusty 
plains of Nevada, and my rights as such 
there was none to dispute. Among the 



THE MINER. 59 

roaming miners I did all the marrying, the 
burying, and the preaching for hundreds of 
miles around, and I never lacked for plenty 
of money to move about with. I had to 
travel much in stagecoaches, on mule backs, 
etc. 

Going into Eureka one day, when that 
town was in its boyhood pants, I was given 
the heartiest reception by its citizens, mostly 
miners, all fighting to have me as their guest. 
Arrangements were made at once with the 
proprietor of the dance saloon to have me 
preach there that night. When the hour of 
service arrived, you could see half a dozen 
of the ''boys" running through the streets 
ringing dinner bells, and calling on their 
fellows to turn out to church. Inside the 
saloon all was put in order ; a large cloth 
was drawn over the whiskey bottles, the 
girls were quietly and modestly sitting by 
themselves, and were practising hymn tunes 
so as to lead the singing. My pulpit was 
the counter, from behind which I preached 
to about six hundred men, all standing up 
during the service, and packed like herrings 
in a barrel. 



60 TWENTY- FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

Worship over, a tall, rough-looking fellow 
shouted, " Now, boys, let us give the parson 
a liberal collection ! Whoop 'er up, boys ; 
throw into this hat the white and yellow 
wheels,. and bad luck to your silver holes in 
the mountains if you don't do it up brown ! " 
Needless to say that the collection was a 
large one. 

On passing out, with trembling voice and 
moistened eye an old man grasped my hand 
and said: " Young man, when I was like you 
I was a Christian too, but I quarreled with 
my wife in the East and left her. That was 
in '49, and I don't know now anything about 
her, or any one else of my relations. I 
would give my bottom dollar to see once 
more those I used to love, but perhaps I will 
meet them in heaven. I am now old and 
must go somewhere else than here soon, but 
I tell you, friend, this religion that I experi 
enced when I was young will up at times, 
that it will. I have been a hard-living man 
among these mountains, but my mother's 
religion is now my only comfort. Ah ! yes 
it will up ; " and so saying he went out into 
the darkness wiping his eyes. 



THE MINER. 6 1 

Coming in from Hamilton city on my 
mule, through that dreary desert which lies 
between the White Pine range and the Cen- 
tral Pacific Railroad, I caught up on an old 
man who was tramping it back to California. 
He had on his shoulder a pick and a spade, 
at the end of which was a little bundle of 
food and clothing. He was dusty, sad, and 
weary. His long, white hair, his deeply 
furrowed face, and slowly measured step 
there all alone in the sagebrush made him 
the very picture of despair. And yet on 
closer inspection you could see that he was 
once a strikingly handsome man. I felt sorry 
for him and asked him to exchange places 
with me, but he would not. I urged him, 
but he positively refused, saying, " Not a 
step will I ride in stagecoach or on back of 
mule. I will teach this old kangaroo to go 
again to White Pine." White Pine had at 
the time a great silver boom and of course 
thousands flocked there, as they always do 
to such places, only to be disappointed. 
Here was one of the disappointed ones pun- 
ishing himself by walking back hundreds of 
miles to where he came from. Thinks I, 



62 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

here Is a man worth knowing, and jumping 
off my mule, I walked beside him for a 
while to learn the history of his life. About 
noon we came to a little water hole, and I 
proposed that we should rest awhile and 
make coffee. He consented, and while we 
were partaking of the cheerful cup together 
and speaking of the hardships of frontier 
life, he gradually went over his own checkered 
career. Said he : "I am an Englishman and 
belonged at home to an aristocratic family in 
Kent. In boyhood I went to Eton and 
Cambridge and prepared myself for high 
social standing. I married a rich and beau- 
tiful lady, but she was, like myself, fond of 
fast horses and gambling, and so we burned 
the candle at both ends, and it soon went out 
in smoke. To retrieve our ruined fortune, we 
went to Australia, and my wife got employ- 
ment as governess in a rich family and I 
went to the gold diggings. I had good luck, 
and after a few years I was worth thirty 
thousand pounds. I then returned to Mel- 
bourne and set up an establishment, living 
with my wife again in great style. Indeed, 
neither of us could bear the idea of any one 



THE MINER. 63 

else being ahead of us in extravagant dis- 
play. The old passion for gambling came 
back to us, and we lived a fast life. Again 
our riches took wings and fled, and my wife 
fled with them to the arms of another who 
could keep the show a-going. I went back 
again to the diggings, but made nothing, and 
then to cattle running and sheep herding. 
This was a dog's life, and I left it and re- 
turned to the city. 

" I did such odd jobs as I could get to do 
for a living. One day I was sweeping the 
pavement for a storekeeper in front of his 
store, when who should happen to come 
along but my faithless wife, dressed in great 
style, on the arm of her lover. She stopped 
and began to cry when she saw my condition, 
and angry words passed between husband 
number one and number two. The cad made 
an insulting remark and I shot him dead be- 
fore I knew what I was about. My wife 
screamed, and I had to flee for my life. I 
took to the bush and there lived awhile more 
like a savage than anything else. When I 
thought it safe to do so, I ventured to the 
coast and left Australia as a sailor, going to 



64 TWENTY- FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

Java. From there I worked my way to San 
Francisco. That was many years ago, and 
though I feel quite safe now from arrest, yet 
my Hfe in CaHfornia has been a hard one. 
I came near getting hung in the city by the 
Golden Gate during the vigilants. They gave 
me one hour in which to leave the city for- 
ever when some of my chums were strung 
up, and I took to the mountains without 
delay, and I have been roughing it ever 
since. I don't know what became of my 
wife, and my friends in England don't know 
anything of my whereabouts, and I suppose 
they don't care, now that I have the brand of 
Cain upon me. 

'' My life is a lost one, whereas it might 
have been both happy and honorable. Ex- 
travagance did it, and now 

*My days are in the yellow leaf, 

The flowers and fruits of love are gone, 
The worm, the canker, and the grief 
Are mine alone.' 

" I have tried in many ways to forget the 
past, but I cannot, and with Byron I can 
truly say : — 



THE MINER. 65 

' I fly like a bird of the air, 

In search of a home and a rest, 
A balm for the sickness of care, 

A bliss for a bosom unblessed. 
I wander, it matters not where. 

No clime can restore me my peace 
Or snatch from the frown of despair 

A cheering, a fleeting release. 
But homeless and heartless I roam, 

My bosom all bared to the wind, 
The victim of pride and of love ; 

I seek, — but, ah ! where can I find? ' " 

riis, indeed, was a sad story of conjugal 
failure, financial ruin, remorse of conscience, 
and misery without a single ray of hope. 
I tried to inspire him with new courage, but 
it was no good. He lost faith in himself, in 
manhood and womanhood, and he hoped 
when he died that they might bury him be- 
side a dog, for he believed there was more 
faithfulness to the dog than to man. 

The miner's life was full of romance and 
adventure during those early days in Cali- 
fornia and Nevada. The old "forty-niners" 
now living delight to relate, when they are 
in the right mood for it, their first experiences 
on the coast. I have spent at their fireside 



66 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

some of the most enjoyable hours of my 
Hfe Hstening to their stories so full of almost 
incredible things. 

Visiting in Virginia City an old friend 
whose acquaintance I had made in Elko, he 
told me at my request a bit of his history 
after w^e had partaken of supper. 

" When the rush for California was on, in 
'49," said he, " I and my wife and chil- 
dren left our farm in Ohio, accompanied 
by the wife's brother. We started overland 
to California. We had two covered wagons 
drawn by four yoke of oxen, in which we 
lived on the journey. We had a very hard 
time of it between Indians, swollen rivers, 
and bad roads. 

''After getting through the American 
Desert, where we had some trouble with the 
Indians, we arrived at a point where the road 
forked, one branch going considerably north 
of the other into California. There we re- 
mained for a week, wrangling as to which we 
should take. My wife sided with her brother 
in favor of the northern route. Neither of 
us would yield a peg, and finally we divided 
the children, the oxen, and all that we had ; 



THE MINER. 67 

she and her brother going their way, and I 
going mine. We did not expect to meet 
again, at least I did not, nor wished to either, 
for I was sick of her and all her relatives. 
She always sided with them and against me, 
and I put up with her as long as I did be- 
cause of the children. I ceased to love her 
and despised all her kin. Well, we parted, 
and women being scarce on the coast in 
those days, she got married to a fellow who 
had luck. He took her to San Francisco 
and they lived in big style. I had many ' ups ' 
and 'downs,' and being one day without a 
dollar in the same city, I went about looking 
for work. A rich swell hired me to chop a 
cord of wood in his back yard. At noon I 
sat down on the wood to eat a few crusts I 
had in my pocket when, on looking up, whom 
did I see but my old wife dressed to kill, 
just as if she had come from Paris, and look- 
ing down on me from her window. ' Halloa ! 
is that you up there so grand ? ' I said. 
' Yes,' said she, ' and you better come in 
and get a decent dinner.' I went, for I was 
pretty lank at the time, and a good dinner 
was not to be despised. While I was eating 



68 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

she asked after the children I had and told 
me about her new married life. I did not 
stay long inside, for my employer, who was 
down town, might come in, and finding me 
there instead of in his back yard, raise 
a row. When I got through, she paid me a 
few dollars more than I agreed to do the job 
for and I left. Before going, however, I 
made a few remarks on the folly of our 
quarreling, when, tossing her head, she said, 
* It was a good thing for me, at any rate. 
You are now suffering for not doing as 
brother wanted you to.' I kept plodding on, 
and by and by I struck it rich in the Sacra- 
mento valley and was on the board of alder- 
men of Sacramento City, when one day a 
poor, haggard, miserable-looking woman ap- 
plied to us for relief, I knew her well, but 
did not let on that I did. She knew me also, 
but acted as if she did not want to be recog- 
nized. She got the relief she wanted, and 
procuring her address, I called and took the 
children from her. I learned afterwards that 
she died in the poorhouse. 

** I am now married, as you see, to another 
wife, who is not so headstrong as the other 



THE MINER. 69 

was. Had my first been like this one the 
forks of the road would not have parted us. 
But bygones are bygones." 

I observed on almost all occasions, even 
when the story-teller was in the best of 
spirits, that there was an undertone of sad- 
ness in the voice. Strange and romantic 
things happened in the days of long ago ; 
yes, and sad, sorrowful things too, the bare 
remembrance of which brought moisture to 
the eye and a lump to the throat. 

Rough and rude as frontiersmen may be 
to each other, they never fail to be polite and 
chivalrous to women, and courteous to minis- 
ters of the gospel. In all my experience in 
the wild West I never saw but politeness to 
good women, and I never had a single insult 
offered myself by any one, except by a post- 
master in Elko, Nevada, and he was a miser- 
able foreign infidel who had once been a 
miner. It was the custom of this man, 
invariably, when I entered, especially if the 
postofftce was full of men waiting for their 
mail, to sneer at religion, the Bible, and 
preachers. I endured his taunts for a long 
time, until endurance ceased to be a virtue, 



70 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

and then I felt it my duty to buckle on the 
armor, speaking figuratively, and give the 
unbelieving scamp a thrashing. One day 
when I was standing in the crowd waiting 
for my mail, he remarked in the hearing 
of all, for my benefit, " What simple fools 
these preachers are, coming out here to tell 
us that Jesus was the Son of God, or even 
that there is a God at all ! " I replied with 
warmth : " You vile-mouthed infidel ! it is 
your place to attend to the business of your 
office, and properly represent the President 
who appointed you ; but seeing that you 
keep insulting me and the Master whom I 
represent, and that reason and argument are 
only like casting pearls before swine in your 
case, I ask you to come out here from behind 
that counter, and if I don't put religion into 
you, I will at least give you the whipping 
you deserve." 

This came as a surprise to him. He 
looked at me dumfounded and speechless, 
wondering, perhaps, if I could do it, or if 
President Grant would remove him if he had 
a fight In the of^ce and was reported. At 
any rate, he stood as if he were struck dumb, 



THE MINER. 7 1 

while the laughing crowd cheered the parson 
and demanded that he should come out from 
his desk and receive his whipping like a man, 
there and then, English fashion. But he 
declined, remarking that the rules of his 
office did not allow him to fight while on 
duty. "Then," shouted the excited crowd, 
" you are a miserable coward, for you used 
your office' to insult a man who was attend- 
ing to his own business ! " Never, during the 
years I was there, did that man open his 
mouth to me against religion again, and we 
became quite friendly afterwards. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE STAGE ROBBER. 

OTAGE robbing in those early days of 
^ Nevada was a common occurrence, and 
more than once I came home minlis my col- 
lections and everything else of value. It 
seemed to be a paying industry, for a large 
number of able-bodied men were engaged in 
it. I only succeeded once in cheating those 
bold rascals. Coming from one of the most 
flourishing mining towns of the State with a 
silver brick in my pocket, presented me by 
the governor, a band of daring wretches, 
standing on the road in front of us, saluted 
our driver with a shot of blank cartridge. 
We all knew what that meant, and those of 
us who had valuables on our persons were 
put to our wits how to save them. I grieved 
to lose my beautiful brick, when a bright 
thought possessed me ; it was to cut a hole in 
the cushion of my seat and there hide it. 
When the coach stopped we were required 



THE STAGE ROBBER. 73 

to turn out, take off our boots, and stand in a 
row while the robbers searched our pockets. 
This was the usual method of relieving us of 
whatever was worth taking. Then a hurried 
glance at the inside of the coach and all was 
over. On the occasion referred to, my much- 
prized brick was not discovered. I shook 
hands with the gentlemen of the road on 
parting, and invited them to come to my 
church when they came to Elko. 

Sometimes I have known inexperienced 
young men from the East to try their hand 
at the business, but they generally made a 
mess of it. They got either caught or killed. 
I felt exceedingly sorry for one of those mis- 
guided youths whom I met in one of our 
hospitals. With two of his chums he started 
ahead of the coach going to Idaho from 
Elko, one night in winter ; and a snowstorm 
coming on, which covered the stage road, 
they got lost. One was frozen to death, one 
had to have both feet taken off, an operation 
in which I took part, and the other got well 
as by the skin of his teeth. The one that 
got his feet taken off used to come to my 
study, which was near the hospital, on his 



74 TWENTY- FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

hands and knees and have me write letters to 
his parents in New York State. I have one 
of those letters still, and here it is : — 

My dear Parents, — Your bad, disobedient boy has 
met with a cold reception in this wicked country, so cold 
indeed that he has lost both his feet. 

Others did so well at stage robbing that Bill Wilson, 
Dick Dyer, and I thought we would try our hand at it, 
but we made a miserable failure. A terrible snowstorm 
came on us in the mountains and poor Wilson was frozen 
to death. Dick got through it all right, but my feet 
were so badly frozen that they had to be cut off. It is 
awful to think of it, that I must go the rest of my days 
on crutches. The other fellows that came with us West 
robbed a coach one night and got so much gold and 
silver that they were overloaded and so got caught by 
the sheriff; they are now serving a term of ten years in 
prison. 

Dick has skipped to California, and the sheriff is 
threatening to send me there also if I don't get money 
to take me home. For God's sake, try and send me 
some immediately and I will promise never to leave 
home again. Your affectionate son, 

Joseph Saunders. 

Stage robbing was usually the outcome of 
gambling, and both the gambler and the rob- 
ber ended their wicked course in the same 
place — either the penitentiary or the grave. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE QUEER PREACHER. 

QUEER customers of every sort used to 
visit us in those Nevada towns after 
the opening of the railroad. Temperance 
lecturers would come, hold meetings abusing 
the use of liquor, and then finish up by 
going on a big drunk. Preachers, too, with 
a shady record would visit us, and for a time 
you would imagine that they were the salt of 
the earth, but after a bit the salt would lose 
its savor. Theatricals would come demand- 
ing the use of the churches for their plays, 
and when they didn't get them they would 
call all belonging to them hypocrites. I 
foolishly once consented to let one such 
party play in my church, as the acting was in 
the interest of temperance, and when they 
got through they stole my pulpit Bible, which 
cost ten dollars. 

A queer-looking preacher once came to 
Elko to convert to his faith — which was of a 

75 



76 TWENTY- FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

sort as queer as himself — all the people of the 
place. Because I would not step aside and 
give him my pulpit he went about town tell- 
ing that I was an escaped convict from over 
the water. 

The sheriff of the county being a friend of 
mine, I requested him to write to a similar 
official in my native land in order to find out 
the falsity of the charge. '* No," said he, " I 
will have him come and preach to my pris- 
oners in jail to-morrow, and if he escapes 
with his life he may be thankful." So the 
sheriff informed him that the prisoners de- 
sired to have him preach to them the gospel, 
for they were penitent. He went and was 
locked in with a dozen as hardened sinners 
as preacher ever spoke to. After he began 
his worship a bucketful of dirty slops was 
poured over him. Then began a scene that 
I suppose he has never forgotten. They 
took him by the neck and feet and pitched 
him from side to side of their cell ; they beat 
him and pounded him till his body was 
covered with bruises. The yells of him for 
mercy, and shouting to the sheriff, could be 
heard a block or two away. When he was 



THE QUEER PREACHER. "^^ 

more dead than alive they let him out, and 
he rushed to my study for refuge and cleans- 
ing. This I objected to, but volunteered to 
take him down to the river and souse him in, 
which I did. He left town with the first 
train. 

One day as I stood by my tent door I saw 
a great crowd on the main street listening to 
somebody preaching, for they had nothing 
else to do, it being the Sabbath. Curious 
to hear some one else preach, I joined the 
crowd. The preacher was a little withered, 
wizened creature about forty, and weighed, 
perhaps, one hundred and thirty pounds. 
He had a slanting forehead, long hair hang- 
ing down behind, and a thin voice with a 
sanctimonious drawl to it. His appearance 
was decidedly against him, and what he said 
was even more so. He was a Mormon 
preacher once, he said, over in Utah, but he 
would rather live by the sweat of his brow 
among the mountains of Nevada than by the 
sweat of his jaw proclaiming the false doc- 
trines of Mormondom. Well, his sermon 
was a queer mixture of things sacred and 
divine, and there is no telling how it would 



78 TWENTY- FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

have ended had not his wife put a stop to it, 
for it was getting worse and worse as he 
went on. Here is a sample : " My dearly 
beloved pilgrims in this howling desert of a 
wicked world, ah, yes, I am come to help 
you to Zion, beautiful Zion. Yes, ah, yes, 
verily, for I am guided by a great light ; yes, 
verily, greater than it would be were you to 
sweep the sun, moon, and stars into a great 
heap big as yon mountain. I saw this light 
in Utah, and I heard a voice from heaven, 
too, saying unto me, * Ebenezer, Ebenezer, go 
over the mountains and speak to the children 
of men in Nevada. They have no light there 
but the light of the saloon and the dance 
hall. Their God is their gold, and their 
Saviour is their silver, and there is no health 
in them.' Ah, yes, and the mothers in Israel 
wept sore when I preached my farewell ser- 
mon, and the maidens cried, ' Shall we never 
behold his face again ? ' And they gave me on 
parting, corn and wine, oil and honey. Ah, 
yes, verily, and I came over the mountains, 
and ever since the valleys and the rivers and 
lakes have been saying unto me, 'Arise up, 
Ebenezer, and speak — speak of the new 



THE QUEER PREACHER. 79 

light of Zion.' Yes, verily, verily; and the 
little minnows in the brooks, the fish in the 
rivers, and the trees of the valleys ; ah, yes, 
and the goats on a thousand hills, too, have 
cried out to me, ' Arise, Ebenezer, arise and 
proclaim the new light of Zion.' Ah, yes, 
verily ; and as I came up here from my little 
farm yonder, all things, living and dead, 
clapped their hands and shouted, ' Blessed 
is Ebenezer that cometh in the name of 
the Lord.'" 

Just then an ox team, hauling a load of 
cedar poles, came slowly along to the outer 
edge of Ebenezer's congregation, driven by 
a large woman of middle age, and per- 
haps weighing about two hundred and fifty 
pounds. ''Wo-0-00, thar," from the mas- 
culine voice of the woman brought the 
oxen to a stand. The preacher's back was 
towards her and her presence was unknown 
to him. I was near enough to both to hear 
what each said, and it was after this manner 
in a singsong by Ebenezer, and in a harsh 
undertone by the woman. He : " I am come 
now that you may have my light too, to lead 
you to Zion. Your corn and your wine, your 



8o TWENTY- FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

milk and your honey, your gold and your 
silver, I do not ask, for, like the preachers 
which be of the world, for myself, ah, no, 
verily." She: ''Oh, you barking Cayote 
you ! " He : "You may give me these, how- 
ever, for the use of my family if you wish to, 
but I need them not for myself, as it is my 
food and drink to do my Father's will." She : 
" You big-mouthed jackass you ! " He : " Ah, 
yes, verily, and the laborer is worthy of his 
hire while he toils in the vineyard of his 
Lord." She : " You lazy, white-livered loafer ! 
I never knew you to do an honest day's work 
since I got you." He: "Woe is me if I 
dwell in Nevada and not preach in the town 
of Elko ! Ah, yes, v'erily." She : " Woe is 
you if you don't sell this wood and get 
supper for the children to-night, you good- 
for-nothing wolf in sheep's clothing you." 
He : " And woe, woe to the tents of Elko if 
my new light of Zion does not shine in 
them." She: " You bottomless pit of dark- 
ness you, your light is not even that of a 
penny candle, and you want to flicker with 
it in the tents of Elko, do you?" "He: 
" Ah, yes, verily, the days of our years are 



THE QUEER PREACHER. 8 1 

threescore and ten, and then the wicked 
cease from troubUng and the weary are at 
rest." She : '' You brainless yellow dog! you 
have had more rest from me and the fleas 
than you deserved." He : '' But, my dearly 
beloved, my light shows me a great city ; ah, 
yes, verily, it is a glorious city, and I will 
walk on the golden streets of that city some 
day with a sweet-faced angel by my side, 
and " — She, at the top of her voice : " You 
will, will you ? you roving prodigal son of 
Sodom and Gomorrah ! " and with that she 
made a bound from the wagon and caught 
him by the collar of his coat, pulling him to 
the ground, and rained upon his prostrated 
body blows from the thick end of her whip. 
The roaring, laughing crowd applauded, 
shouting, "Give it to him," "That's it," 
" Good for the old woman," " Hit 'im again," 
" W'ack it to 'im," " Chuck him in the river," 
etc. When she exhausted the strength of 
her arm on him, she gave him a kick with 
her foot, saying as she did so, " Go sell that 
wood that me an' the children get something 
to eat for supper ; we be starving at home, 
an' you know it." 



82 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

" A woman moved is like a fountain troubled, 
Muddy, ill-seeming, bereft of beauty." 

Rising- up and shtiking himself, Ebenezer 
pathetically said, ** Well, boys, you may 
laugh at this, but I am accustomed to it." 



X 
CHAPTER XI. 

THE CHURCH MEMBER. 

A S members of our churches, too, we 
^^ used to have some queer timbers. 
Generally I got along with the men very 
well, especially if I did n't rebuke too severely 
their besetting sins, but the class of women 
which followed the new railroad were hard to 
manage in church or anywhere else. There 
was Mrs. Rogers, whose tongue went like a 
bell clapper from morning till night. She 
was a terrible scandal to our church at 
Lebanon. Perhaps I had better let one of 
my elders describe her as he did shortly after 
in the local paper of his Eastern home : — 

" Out here in Nevada they have made me 
an elder in a Presbyterian church at Lebanon. 
We have a young preacher just from Union 
Seminary, New York. We have strange 
people here composing our churches. They 
come from all parts of the world in search of 
wealth, and some of them claim to be reli- 
83 



84 TWENTY- FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

gious, though such are few and far between. 
But if we are to have churches at all, we 
must take such timbers as the country affords. 
We have one or two in our church that 
I wish sometimes we could hand over, 
like Brigham Young, to the buffetings of 
Satan. 

" There is Mrs. Rogers and her husband ; 
they are the stormy petrels of our town and 
church. If you cross them in any way or 
rebuke them for their slanderous speaking, 
there is at once an opening of the temple 
doors of Jupiter, and before you know it 
there is a scattering of forked lightning and 
a thunder burst. 

" He is a red-headed mule driver, and she 
is a black-haired boarding-house keeper with 
a dash of Mexican blood in her. The black- 
guardism that goes on continually between 
them, and never ceases in church or elsewhere, 
is the scandal of the country. The preacher 
prays earnestly in his study to the Lord to 
change the ' lion into a lamb and the hyena 
into a turtle dove,' if it is possible for him 
to do so, for the good of the place ; but this 
is as far as he will venture near them. One 



THE CHURCH MEMBER. 85 

day recently I called on him and said, ' This 
thing must stop. Our church is being 
ruined ; the people are leaving us and join- 
ing the Methodists. We will have no church 
at all soon if we don't put Mr. and Mrs. 
Rogers out.' The preacher thought we had 
better go slow and first gently caution them 
against their unruly temper to see how it would 
work. So we resolved to visit them, and 
having braced up our courage for the risky 
ordeal, we went forth and entered their house 
and sat down in the parlor. Presently Mrs. 
Rogers came in and took a chair opposite us. 
After a few commonplace remarks about the 
weather and the prospects of the growing 
crops and the mining industry, the parson, 
meek as Moses, began to expatiate on the 
evils resulting from ungovernable passions 
and the unruly member that sometimes 
needed bit and bridle. 

'' While he talked with fear and trembling, 
Mrs. Rogers, gazing at him, moved sideways, 
then backwards and forward, like a huge 
giant in the bowels of a mountain and trying 
to throw it into the sea, and a wild frown 
began to gather on her brow, like the thunder 



86 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

clouds that sometimes loom up over the 
Rockies and deluge the rugged peaks with 
rain. Her large, dark eyes began to flash 
fire like lightning in the tropics during the 
wet season ; and then, fast as a meteor 
athwart the heavens, she ran through the 
long passage of her boarding-house, scream- 
ing, shrieking, ' Rogers ! Rogers, come here ! 
He is insulting your wife ! ' Rogers was 
cutting firewood in the back yard, and he 
came in, rushing like a buffalo and bellow- 
ing like a bull of Bashon. ' Who ? Who ? 
Where is he ? ' with the axe high uplifted in 
air. I hid in the dining-room, but while Mrs. 
Rogers was pounding me with a rolling-pin, 
the preacher bolted through the frout door 
and down the street so fast that you could 
have played cards on his coat-tails, and Rogers 
after him. The idle dogs joined in the chase. 
It was a sight for gods and men. The 
women rushed out to their doors, the dancers 
and gamblers in the saloons rushed to the 
streets, everybody asking, ' What is it ? 
What is the matter?' The two men ran like 
race horses on the track. Now Rogers 
seemed to be catching up, and now the 



THE CHURCH MEMBER. 87 

parson seemed to be the swiftest runner. It 
was almost neck and neck between them, 
however. The man of peace had serious 
business on his hands and for his legs, and he 
knew it, therefore strained every nerve and 
muscle. Yes, for if the man of war had 
caught up, he would have split him in two. 
Fortunately for the young minister, he was a 
Freemason, and he took refuge in a car- 
penter's shop where all were brothers, and, 
giving the grand hailing sign of distress, was 
quickly surrounded by men who kept Roger 
at bay. Then the furious bull went home 
and asked his wife what it was all about." 
More shipwrecked lives, more beggars 
who were but yesterday millionaires, and 
more millionaires who were but yesterday 
beggars, it would be hard to find in any other 
country under the sun, than was to be found 
on the Pacific slope during the last genera- 
tion. How often my heart bled for the poor, 
unfortunate outcasts of society, especially 
when called in to administer consolation in 
the dying hour, or to read the burial service 
over them in death ! The tale of woe which 
some of them would relate was often sad in 



88 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

the extreme. In one of the mining towns 
of the Sierras, I was sent for to one of the 
hotels of the place, to comfort a wretched 
creature who was fast nearing the end of her 
course in despair. She was once a church 
member. 

On entering her room, I found her crying 
piteously and in great agony. I tried to 
calm her mind by showing her that the path 
of life for all of us was rugged and full of 
sorrows, but that there was a happier life await- 
ing the soul who was washed in the fountain for 
sin and uncleanness. It was but little I could 
comfort, for she seemed, as she said, ''to be 
perishing without hope." The tale of her 
life was a sad one. She was the only child 
of fashionable parents who were continually 
at war with each other. When she was 
about fifteen her father left home, taking her 
with him, and after living a few months in 
another State, procured a divorce from her 
mother. He then married again, and her 
stepmother was bad to her and she ran away 
with a sporting fellow who promised to marry 
her in Chicago, but he did n't. Then he took 
her out to San Francisco, and after a year of 



THE CHURCH MEMBER. 89 

ill treatment, left her ; and as she had neither 
parents nor character, she abandoned forever 
the path of purity, and sunk lower and lower 
in vice till she had now come to the end of 
her course, hating the living and fearing to 
die. Coming back the next day, I brought 
with me this prayer, which I had written out 
for the purpose of reading to her, for she 
told me that she preferred read prayers. 
'' O Lord of heaven and earth, hear the 
wailing cry of this poor lost sheep that has 
wandered away from the shepherd's fold to 
these mountains of vanity here, which are 
now become to her bleak and cold ! She is 
here alone among rough, cruel men, far from 
mother's and father s love, and she fears, be- 
yond the reach of divine mercy. Have com- 
passion upon this child of thine own creation, 
O Father in heaven, and guide her safely 
through the dark valley of death. Hear, oh, 
hear the qry of her soul for cleansing from 
the pollutions of Sodom and Gomorrah, for 
she was once pure as the snow, in a mother's 
arms. To that mother's arms she now can- 
not go to nestle again her head in the bosom 
of human love, and she weeps the weeping 



90 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

that knows no consolation till encircled with 
the arms of divine love. Have pity, Lord of 
life and death, and save from the raging 
waves of a degraded life while the waters of 
death are coming up over the soul. The 
jewel in the mire is jewel still, and, O Jesus, 
Son of Mary, take this precious stone and 
polish it for a place in the Temple not made 
with hands in thy kingdom." When I ap- 
proached her bed, I saw that she was fast 
dying ; and as she was too weak to speak I 
knelt and read my prayer. What good it 
did her I cannot tell, for when I rose up from 
her bedside the weeping spirit had fled and 
the hands were folded in death. A few 
rough neighbors gathered in, and we took 
her up tenderly and dug a hole in the side 
of the mountain, and there, as gently as ever 
mother laid her child to sleep in its cradle 
bed, we laid her away till the coming of the 
Angel of the Resurrection. 

In a room adjoining the one in which this 
woman died was a lady from St. Louis, who 
was a church member from her youth in one 
of the most fashionable churches of that city. 
Up to this time she did not deign to attend 



THE CHURCH MEMBER. 9I 

any of our Sunday services. The preacher, 
the audience, and the surroundings were all 
too far beneath her notice to do that. The 
partition wall between the two rooms, like 
those of most frontier hotels, was rather thin, 
and the reading of the prayer could be easily 
heard by our uppish, self-righteous friend 
from St. Louis. She did hear it, and it went 
home to the right place, too. It was not 
meant for her, but it was under God the 
means of her conversion, and the making of 
her one of the noblest of Christian workers. 
The unruly church member, the fallen 
church member, or the mere churchly church 
member, is bad enough in civilized communi- 
ties, but when you find such in the wild West 
they are worse than useless. There it is 
either belief or infidelity, Christianity or 
heathenism. It is for the East to say what 
the West will be. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE CHURCH ROW. 

T WITNESSED a church row on a grand 
^ scale once in Nevada. You talk of 
church rows here in the East, why, they are 
no more like what we used to have out there 
than a hurdy-gurdy and monkey show is like 
a Barnum circus. Out yonder they were 
grand with the grandeur of the Rocky 
Mountains and Sierras. We had none of 
your little quarrels you have hereabouts with 
small Christians in them saying mean things 
against each other in the dark. No, when a 
sister in Nevada buckled on the armor to do 
battle against the Midianites she was a 
Deborah, when a brother drew his sword he 
was a Gideon, or a Samson mowing down 
the Philistines with the jawbone of an ass. 
I attended such a row one Sunday afternoon 
at a church service under a spreading oak by 
the Truckee River, on the eastern slope of 
the Sierras. The congregation was made up 
of silver miners, gamblers, lumbermen, and 



THE CHURCH ROW. 93 

gold hunters from California. Some of them 
were Welshmen with their 'wives, with a 
dozen or so Indians standing on the outer 
edge of the congregation. 

When the preacher got through his sermon 
he asked them to name the next place of 
meeting. "Pine Nob" Morgan suggested 
that we meet at Sister Ferguson's place in 
Roaring Canon. Mrs. Morgan jumped up and 
said : " Not if I know it, by gosh ! " Pine 
Nob told her to shut her mouth or he would 
put a spur of the Sierras in it. California 
Jack from Cedar Gulch told Pine Nob that 
he was no gentleman, and didn't know how 
to behave himself in church. Mrs. Brown 
screamed that Pine Nob was seen going too 
often up to Roaring Canon. Andy Jackson 
asked her what sort of a boarding-house she 
kept when Brown was in the mountains ? 
One of the boarders got up and said he 
would make mince-meat of Andy and feed 
him to the dogs. Jemima Ferguson asked 
where was last Sunday's collection ? '' It was 
drunk at the Red Gulch saloon ! " shouted 
a half-dozen angry voices. The preacher 
raised his arm to pronounce the benediction, 



94 TWENTY- FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

but they must have supposed that he was 
waving them on to deeds of valor, for every 
man and woman of them sprung to their feet 
and at each other Hke fury. Then you would 
see their eyes glare like Carnegie's furnaces, 
their fists rising into the upper air like a 
peak of the Rockies, and the sound of their 
screaming and shouting was like the roaring 
of the Atlantic when a " sou'wester " is blow- 
ing. Red Dog, one of the Indians present, 
gave a war whoop and leaped up from the 
ground four feet, and then ran around yelp- 
ing, as he used to when after scalps. 

I tell you they don't know how to get up 
church rows back here in the East, and when 
they try it they don't succeed any better than 
Balaam's ass did, or Jonah when he went into 
the gourd plantation business. Usually, too, 
they do it with a pious twang, and a stranger 
might suppose that they were Hezekiahs or 
men of that stamp. 

I like first-class church rows with first-class 
Christians in them. Then the air smells like 
the atmosphere of Nevada and the music 
enters your soul like '' Scots wha hae wi' 
Wallace bled." 



CHAPTER XIII. 

"INDIAN JOE." 

TNDIAN JOE" was an old-timer in 
^ Nevada. He used to hunt bad Indians 
for the government, and he boasted when 
I knew him that he could put as clean a bullet 
through a bad Indian, or anything else bad, 
as any man that ever came to Nevada. 
When you saw him walking in the sage- 
brush, you imagined that you saw an Indian, 
for his movements were so similar. " Indian 
Joe " made bricks and laid them in the wall 
when he got the chance. There was nothing 
small about Joe, and when I was about to 
build a church he came to me and said : 
" Parson Riley, I will build you the founda- 
tion if you allow me to preach a sermon and 
take the collection when the church is 
finished, for I used to giv^e the boys a word 
in season myself before you parsons began 
to come to Nevada." When the Sunday 
arrived that Joe was to preach, he entered 



96 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

the pulpit arrayed in moccasins and other 
Indian toggery, and gave a wild, rambling 
harangue on the laborer being worthy of his 
hire. It was a genuine old-timer. When he 
got through, he ordered the collection box 
sent round, but when it returned to him his 
countenance fell and there was blood in his 
eye. "You Ishmaelites of the desert!" he 
said, " do you think that I am going to lay 
church foundations for the fun of it? Do 
you think that I am going to set up for you 
a ladder to climb to heaven with and take for 
myself a willow pole ? Do you think that I 
am going to give you bricks, bread of life, 
and eggs for your stones and your serpents ? " 
Having put these three searching questions 
to his hearers, he made a leap from the plat- 
form, locked the door, and nailed down the 
windows before any one could realize what he 
was doing. Then leaping back on the plat- 
form like an Indian mounting his horse, he 
shouted, " I am a roaring rhinoceros, I am! 
Am a lion bereft of its pup, I am ! Am a 
grizzly bear, I am ! Come away with the 
shining dust or you will see to-morrow before 
you see the outside of this church ! The 



'* INDIAN JOE. 97 

box was again sent round, and came back full 
and running over. Joe glanced at it and 
said, " That 's the sort of Christians I want 
you to be in Nevada." 

'' Parson Riley, pronounce the benediction 
and open the door." 

The wily fox came to me shortly after and 
said: "These people out here have no re- 
spect for a man unless he appears rich. If 
you can tell them that you own a silver mine 
out in the mountains, they will drive be- 
fore you like lambs on the straight and nar- 
row path. Now, brother, I have a mine out 
in Silver Mountain. It is called the Square 
Dimond. There 's millions in it. Were I to 
publish it in New York, you would see some 
of the big millionaires coming after it. But 
the brickyard will keep the old man going 
the rest of his days. Let us go out and see 
it. I would rather sell it to you than any one 
else in Nevada, for it would increase your 
influence mightily with the boys if you could 
tell them that you had a stake in the coun- 
try." Out we went, and sure enough, there 
was the mine about five feet deep, and every 
inch of it covered with sparkling silver ore. 



98 TWENTY- FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

There was nothing small about Joe, and he 
said: "I tell you, pard, there's millions in 
that 'ere hole, and I could get hundreds of 
thousands for it back East, but if you wish 
to be a powerful preacher here in Nevada, 
you want that mine. I will give it to you for 
five hundred dollars — one hundred dollars 
cash, and the balance next year. Buy it, 
parson, and you can rebuke the wicked with 
boldness." Of course I bought, paid down 
one hundred dollars, and gave my note for 
the remainder. 

A truthful man told me that he saw Indian 
Joe removing the blocks of ore which he put 
in for the purpose. On the day following 
the sale, I went out to see if it were so, and 
the round hole was there just where I left it, 
but the millions. were gone. No matter, that 
hole was the making of me. I owned the 
Square Dimond, and I preached so boldly 
and fearlessly against the wicked that the 
Nevadians used to say that I run the devil 
out of the State and over into Utah. Even 
yet people say that I preach too boldly for a 
poor preacher ; but they don't know that I 
own a mine in Silver Mountain, Nevada. 



'' INDIAN JOE. 99 

Your mill property and your railroad stocks 
may vanish, leaving you as poor as a church 
mouse, but yonder hole will remain forever. 
When I want to feel rich as Vanderbilt, I go 
back to it in thought and look down once 
again on it as I saw it first. Then I am 
happy because I am, mentally at least, inde- 
pendently rich. 

There, were others as well as " Indian Joe," 
however, who cheated after this fashion, and 
scooped in many millions from here and 
Europe — the owners of the Emma mine, 
for instance. I was located not far from that 
famous mine and knew from the workmen 
how the fraud was perpetrated, and on going 
to Scotland went to Sir Donald Cameron, 
editor of the Glasgow Mail, and told him of 
it. He did not credit me at first, as the Eng- 
lish deputation had published a glowing 
report of what they saw. I put a flea in his 
ear, however, which led to a secret investiga- 
tion and the bubble burst, but not, I am sorry 
to say, till thousands of families were ruined. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE MORMON. 

TN the town of Elko, and other places 
^ where money was plentiful in Nevada, 
the wily Mormon, of both sexes, was wont 
to visit sometimes on a pious mission, and 
sometimes on a worldly errand. But be the 
object what it might, the Latter Day Saint 
was always sure, in some way or other, to 
leave the Gentile poorer than he found 
him. 

'' Scotch Mary," for instance, w^as a Mor- 
mon wife in Salt Lake City, or, perhaps, what 
is nearer the truth, she was the tenth part of 
a wife. 

Mary was a knowing one. She came to 
our town when I was there and started a 
laundry. She went then around among us 
young men and borrow^ed five dollars. Who 
would not trust her ? Did we not sing of 
Scotland, Annie Laurie, Bonnie Jane, and 
Highland Mary? This Scotch lass, we said, 



THE MORMON. lOI 

had been abused by her old Mormon brute 
of a husband. Mary got our sympathy and 
used it to her own advantage. After a week 
or so she came round to us (and w^e were a 
great multitude), saying she could not pay 
back the five dollars in money, but she would 
in washing. "That's a good, honest girl," 
we said. "Would an American girl do 
that ? " Coming to my room, Mary gathered 
up everything I had in the shape of collars, 
cuffs, shirts, etc., assurinof me that she would 
return them on the following Saturday night 
as I needed them for Sunday, and left my 
hotel w^ith a great burden upon her back. 
Saturday night came and Sunday, too, but 
Mary did not. She skipped back to Utah, 
taking my washing and that of about tw^o 
dozen other youngsters with her. The most 
trying thing about it was that I had to an- 
nounce that on the following Sunday I would 
be absent, as I had to go to Corinne in Utah, 
to assist in the dedication of a church. 
When I made the announcement my congre- 
gation laughed in my face, and I could 
hear them whisper, " He 's going after his 
washing." 



I02 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

After worship the young men would come 
to me and say: ''Riley, look out for mine; 
my name is on it." When the train moved 
out from the station, they cheered and 
shouted, " Success to the parson and his 
linen mission ! " It made me feel provoked 
at them, and I wished in my soul that I had 
not told them that Mary had got me, too, 
in the same boat they were in. When I 
come to think of it, this is nothing less than 
retributive justice for what I had done some 
twenty years before. 

When a boy of twelve or so, it was the joy 
of my heart to go with other mischievous 
boys to a public park of Glasgow, Scotland, 
and there tease a certain Mormon preacher 
while he expounded the doctrines of the 
church of " Latter Day Saints." I remember 
it as if it were yesterday. Said he : " You 
Scotch are far too holy. David and Solomon, 
and Jacob and Abraham, were holy, but they 
had many wives. You people put yourselves 
above these saints of God." 

This was more than we boys could stand, 
for our ministers told us that we were miser- 
able sinners by nature, and doomed to go to 



THE MORMON. IO3 

hell. He was an i\merican missionary, and 
that made it all the more tempting for us to 
punish him. Perhaps there were two hundred 
of us, and we crowded and pushed, and we 
finally threw his stand over and him. with it. 
He had a nice silk hat, and when he and the 
stand came down to earth I, a most wicked boy, 
ran off with his hat, kicking it before me. I 
ruined it beyond recovery, even for a Utah head. 

Well, twenty-three years or so passed and 
I entered Salt Lake City looking for a board- 
ing-house, and keeping an eye open for Scotch 
Mary ; and where did I stumble but into the 
very home of this man with the long yellow 
hair from America ! 

When shown into the parlor by the servant 
girl I recognized at once a life-sized picture 
of him on the wall, and was about to make 
for the door when the landlady entered. 
Her name was Mrs. De Long. I told her I 
was visiting in the city, but did not know 
how long I would remain. I fumbled around 
in my mind for an excuse for coming in, and 
in a sort of a far-away talk asked her who 
was that on the wall, at the same time with 
an eye on the door. 



I04 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

She informed me that that was her husband, 
who had been, a missionary to Glasgow. '' Is 
he there yet ? " I asked. ''No," she said. 
'' Where is he ? " said I. '' He 's dead," said 
she. "Then, madam," said I, "I'll stay 
with you for a week ; " and my spirits came 
up from my boots. She told me afterwards 
that he caught cold and died in Glasgow, 
where he was a missionary. Who knows 
but on that night, going home bareheaded, 
he caught his fatal cold ? I was kind to that 
Mormon widow and gave her a good deal more 
than the hat was worth, but never told her that 
I knew her husband in Glasgow twenty- three 
years before. When we got to be on familiar 
terms with each other she told me that when 
a husband died Brigham Young required the 
widows to turn over to him all the property 
possessed, and then pensioned them with a 
small trifle, but that she would not submit to 
that, and he expelled her from the church 
and handed her over to the buffetings of 
Satan for a thousand years. She thought 
Satan did not buffet her any more outside 
than he did inside the Mormon church. I 
had a tender regard and a powerful respect 



THE MORMON. IO5 

for that widow, and although twenty-eight 
years have passed since, I would like to see 
her again. 

I called on Brigham Young while in the 
city and found him fixing up some old 
wagons back of his house. I did not like to 
approach the great man at first, and asked 
one of his workmen if that was Brigham 
Young there, giving directions. " Yes," said 
he, '' that is President Young, and if you 
wish to see him, go into the office and send 
for him." "Beg your pardon," said I, " Presi- 
dent Young." I went into the of^ce as 
directed, and the secretary there told me 
that he was away from home and I could not 
see him. " Beg your pardon," said I, " he 's 
out behind, fixing old wagons." " Beg your 
pardon," said he, " I didn't know it." Pres- 
ently the " president " was brought in, and he 
and I talked for a while about things in 
general, and then I asked him if he knew 
Scotch Mary. " No," said he, " I don't know 
Mary, but there is a large number of Scotch 
women in the territory and they are very 
good saints too." I told him that I thought 
they made very good saints when they got 



I06 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

to heaven, but from what I had seen of them 
in Scotland and Nevada I was not quite sure 
as they ripened good here below. He 
nodded his head hopefully. 

I think Brigham Young was a good man 
naturally, but terribly troubled at home and 
abused abroad. 

He was a native of Vermont, and properly 
fed, clothed, and educated from his child- 
hood. He was a Yankee born and raised, 
but he could not help that. Brigham was a 
real honest man naturally, but got mixed a 
little over in England when he was a mission- 
ary there. More Americans than Brigham 
Young get mixed there, too. Like Brigham, 
Solomon was a wise man, but if he had come 
to England he would have got mixed up 
worse than he was, so that in his old days he 
would not know whether he was a saint or a 
sinner. 

Solomon in all his glory was not as good 
a man as Brigham. Perhaps he had more 
wives than Brigham had, but he was not tried 
as Brigham was. Brigham had red- headed 
Welsh women in his harem, and Solomon did 
not. He (Solomon) had black-haired Ethio- 



THE MORMON. IO7 

plans and Moabites and lovely Jewish maidens, 
and that made all the difference between misery 
and happiness. Brigham was a kind-hearted 
man, but Uncle Sam's Camp Douglas above 
his city prevented him from treating his wives 
as kings do in Asia. 

He and I got very gracious together over 
a cup of tea, for it was about five o'clock 
when I called on him. Brigham was a goodly 
man to look upon. He was tall and straight 
as a pine of the Sierras, and royal looking 
as old King William of Germany. His head 
was like a towering peak of the Rockies and 
white as Mount Shasta in summer. After 
we had supped our tea we took a walk in his 
magnificent garden behind his " Beehive," 
and there he said to me: '' Mr. Riley, you 
know that I am very much married. You 
know also that the opinion prevails among 
the Gentiles, and the Mormons also, that I 
like this sort of thing, but they are all very 
much mistaken. You are a Scotchman, I 
believe, and a Presbyterian minister ? Well, 
the Scotch are good people and better than 
their church, and I want you to do me justice 
when I am dead ! " I assured him that I 



I08 TWENTY- FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

would if I did not die myself before him. 
"Well, you are young," he said, " and likely 
to be around above when I am asleep below, 
and so I will tell you the secret of my life, 
and I wish you to publish it when I am gone. 
When I married my first wife, I had no idea 
of ever having any other than her. She was 
all the world to me, and I loved her like a 
very sister. But after I lived a few years 
with her she became cross and cranky, and 
I had very little pleasure in her company. 
She thought that she could rule me. To show 
her that she could not, I went and took 
another wife, and told the first one that the 
Lord told me to, and she must submit to the 
will of the Lord. The second wife, after a 
time, got to be like the first ; and I then told 
them both that the Lord had told me to 
lengthen the cords and strengthen the stakes 
of my tent, and took a third and a fourth and 
a fifth, and I found that they were all alike 
I stopped awhile at the fifth, and thought 
that was enough, but yet I had a yearning 
for the true and the beautiful and the good 
in womankind. I could not find these 
heavenly qualities in them, and so whei) they 



THE MORMON. IO9 

had me fairly on the road, I kept on going 
in search of my ideal, taking them as they 
came in my way, hoping that some day I 
would come across the dear, loving creature 
I sighed for. I wanted one that would love 
me and keep silent when I wanted to think, 
and that would not dun me for something I 
had not to give. So the sad story went on 
from year to year, and I kept adding to the 
number of my wives, but the one I wanted 
never turned up. The lovely creature before 
my eye was always away off on the far moun- 
tains, and when I came up to her she vanished 
like a snowflake on the river — ' a moment 
white, and then gone forever.' In a dream 
which I had upon my pillow one night, I saw 
a fair and lovely maiden on this side the 
Rocky Mountains, with large, lustrous eyes ; 
her form was perfect as a cedar of Lebanon, 
and her countenance was like the lily of the 
valley, and her demeanor was beautifully 
submissive. She was a sort of an Indian 
maiden with black hair and bare feet, and 
she was like unto those in the Bible who 
publish peace upon the mountains ; and I 
said unto my people : ' Behold the land of 



no TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

promise beyond the Rockies ; arise, and let 
us go hence, for the Lord thinks* well con- 
cerning Zion.' Well, they did arise and 
follow me, and after terrible hardships we 
came out here ; but the maiden my soul 
yearned for, and whom I thought I saw in 
my dream, I have not yet met. I have wept 
for her in solitude, but I cannot find her. 
And so out here I have kept on marrying 
and marrying, but mine eyes do not behold 
her. The lovely creature my soul yearns for 
is not on this side the mountains, and now 
that I am old, I cannot go back to Vermont, 
where I spent my boyhood. I don't know 
how many I have married, but it matters 
little, and I am getting discouraged. I tell 
you the honest truth, Mr. Riley, it is impos- 
sible for a man to be a good prophet, 
preacher, or saint and be fixed as I am. 
These women I have married are the plague 
of my life. They keep pulling at my coat 
tails for this and that from morning till night. 
*' The heifers, too, weary the life out of me 
with their small talk against each other. I 
would be free to go about my master's busi- 
ness, but they hinder me at every point. If I 



THE MORMON. I I I 

show any favor to one more than another, there 
is trouble on my hands at once. They watch 
my movements, too, Hke birds of prey, and 
so retard the growth of Zion. Only but 
yesterday I was drinking- a cup of tea with 
Amelia, and she began to upbraid me for 
being so much in the company of Zephina, 
whom she called an ' ugly old scratch.' 
When I told her not to rebuke a prophet of 
the Lord, she put her feet against her little 
round table, threw it, with dishes and all, 
over me, saying as she did so, ' Prophet of 
the devil ! ' I ran out into the hallway, and 
who was there but Zephina, listening through 
the keyhole ; and when I looked to her for 
comfort, she said : ' Serves you right, you 
old fool ! What business have you calling on 
that wild cat so often, any way ? ' So I am 
watched and kicked by these untamed mus- 
tangs continually. Even when I stand up in 
the tabernacle yonder to preach the truth of 
Zion, they are there by the score, not to listen 
and learn, but to make faces at me." 

After he delivered himself of this tale of 
woe he invited me into the sitting-room, and 
we were no sooner seated than a tall, lank 



112 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

woman with a sunburned face came in from 
the street, saying as she entered, " How 
are you, Mr. President ? " " Who are you ? " 
said the president. '' Don't you remember 
me, dear? I am one of your wives." ''When 
did I marry you ? " was the next question 
from Brigham. " Why, have you forgot- 
ten? It was when we were crossing the 
plains." Her reply did not seem satisfactory 
and he called to his secretary to bring him 
the record book. On looking through it for 
a while he said sadly, in a half whisper, 
"Well, your name is here." Then handing 
the book back to his secretary he asked her, 
" How have you been doing? " " Oh, fairly 
well ; my son and I work on a farm together, 
but I thought I would call in to see if you 
could n't give us a little lift," was her reply. 
To this Brigham said, " I am busy now, 
woman ; come back again." 

When she was gone, turning to me he 
said : " That, you see, is the way they eter- 
nally trouble me for what they call their little 
lifts, and when I give them all the lifts they 
want there is nothing of myself to lift. If I 
had this thing to do over again, I would go 



THE MORMON. II3 

to the land of the Turk and hft them as the 
Turk does. Yes, I would silence their gab- 
bling and their begging for lifts. Here I have 
not the freedom that a prophet should have, 
for your miserable Gentile government is 
against me. A man in marrying," he went 
on, '* should be careful. He should know 
well the stock the wife is of, and after he 
takes her home he should teach her to obey, 
and never allow himself to be controlled. 
Wealth, position, and education are nothing. 
Blood counts for everything. Some families 
have a streak of wolf to them, and no 
amount of outside polishing will avail any- 
thing. I took once a little red-headed Welsh 
girl to be wife, and Satan himself could not 
get along with her. A man in taking a bad- 
tempered woman into his bosom is only tak- 
ing the fires of hell there, and when the fires 
die out they both fall into the bottomless pit. 
There, too, are my sons, some of them grow- 
ing up like wild asses of the desert. They 
take after their mothers as they are good or 
bad, and they are mostly bad ; yes, they are 
all bad. But the other day one of tliem went 
galloping up and down the street there in 



114 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

front of my house with brush tied to his horse's 
tail, and raising the dust at a furious rate. I 
ran out to stop him, asking ' if he had not 
done yet with sowing his wild oats,' and he 
told me ' to get out of the way, that he was 
sweeping them in.' 

''That's how I am treated on every side, 
and my life is a sore trial to me." 

After this we strolled down the street to 
the University and he showed me every- 
thing there of interest. He also gave me 
a catalogue of the University, and in look- 
ing over it I observed that out of about 
five hundred students there were nearly two 
hundred Youngs there. I laughingly asked 
him if these were all his. He replied : 
"Well, friend, they say that most of them 
are, but the Lord only knows. One thing I 
do know, I am too much married, and it 's a 
complete failure." At the gate outside he 
told me again the secret of his polygamous 
marriages, and, as a great favor, asked me to 
put him right with the world when he was 
dead, which I have now done. After warmly 
shaking hands we parted, and we never met 
again. The doctors said at the time of his 



THE MORMON. I 15 

death that he died from eating too much 
green corn, but I am almost sure that he 
died of a broken heart. The man was 
abused to death by his sixty or seventy tem- 
poral wives, to say nothing of his thousands 
of spiritual ones. History tells not the truth 
about Brigham Young, and people imagine 
that he was a great, coarse, sensual monster. 
Nothing of the sort. He was only voyaging 
around on troubled waters, looking, as he told 
me, for the true, the beautiful, and the good 
in womankind. That he died disappointed, 
discouraged, and broken-hearted is the truth, 
known to few but myself. I was to keep it 
secret till he was under the sod, for he feared 
what might happen if his women found it 
out. 

Let not the world abuse Brigham Young. 
He was a good man, a warm-hearted 
man, a generous, noble-minded man, who 
tried hard to make marriage a success but 
failed. 

Peace be to his ashes, and may his 
soul have a quiet nook in the happy land 
where there is neither marrying nor quar- 
reling ! 



Il6 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

It was my lot to visit other parts of Utah 
when beyond the Rockies, and being curious 
to see how the Mormons hved, I mingled 
freely with them. I found that the wives of 
the Latter Day Saints were, as a rule, very 
obedient and submissive to their husbands. 
We wonder sometimes East how a man can 
support so many wives, but the truth is, the 
more wives a man has the better he is off. 
These women are not like ours ; when told to 
go out and work in the fields they go without 
a murmur. I think Brigham's wives were 
trying to put on many airs ; they were 
not fair specimens. I saw in one of the 
southern valleys of Utah one day ten 
women harrowing, and they did it nicely. 
With five poles, one at each end, they pulled 
the harrows quite easily. The husband of 
these women had wealth in them, for they 
saved him buying horses. Their children 
too, about two dozen of them, were follow- 
ing after, gathering stones. The more wives 
a good Mormon has the more prosperous he 
is here, and the more blest he is hereafter, for 
they all go with him to heaven. 

You must not suppose, however, from 



THE MORMON. I I 7 

what I have said that I beHeve in the institu- 
tion of polygamy. One man one woman 
marriage is the divine ideal, and any system 
that interferes with this is wrong and degrad- 
ing to all concerned. 

The Mormon system is an abomination 
which should not have been allowed to exist 
in this country for a single day. 

The Mormon idea of woman is borrowed 
from the Orient and should have no footing, 
not for a moment, in the Occident. It is 
based solely on the requirements of mere 
animal pleasures, and the outcome is slavery, 
hatred, and mental death. No true love or 
family life can exist where it predominates. 
From the Oriental marriage comes the bar- 
barian, from the Occidental comes the gentle- 
man ; two individuals separated in instinct 
by the poles of the universe, for the one 
by nature knows how to hate, therefore learns 
to kill as easily as to breathe ; the other 
knows how to love, therefore readily learns 
to suffer and through suffering leads the race 
to glory. Man cannot lower woman without 
falling himself into degradation ; he cannot 
elevate her without being himself made 



Il8 TWENTY- FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

better. He must either be a beast in her 
arms, or an angel at her feet. The Mormon 
feeds his horses, Hke the tyrant of old, on 
human flesh, and is himself devoured by 
them. 



CHAPTER XV. 

TEXAS. 

T EAVING for a time the frontier, I took 
^-^ hold in Uncle Sam's official city, on the 
banks of the Potomac, where I freed a small 
church from a big debt, built another over the 
river, and taught theology in Howard Uni- 
versity. But the desire for the front again 
grew on me so strong that I could not resist 
it and I therefore started for Texas. 

On reaching the Lone Star State, I went 
straight to the front, nearly seven hundred 
miles west, from the eastern line, where the 
soldiers, the cowboys, and the buffalo hunt- 
ers mingled together, sometimes like wild 
beasts of the forest. A frontier town in 
Texas was a lively place to live in then ; you 
were never lonesome there, for the music of 
the saloon and the revolver reached you even 
in bed at night ; and in the morning when you 
arose and went out, you could wile away an 
hour or so looking up dead bodies for burial. 



I20 TWENTY- FIVE YEARS A PARSON- 

I remember how delighted an old Nevada 
miner was next morning after his arrival. 
On seeing a dead body on the street which 
had been killed the night before, he gave a 
yell like a Comanche and said, " Golly! I'll 
stay here I This reminds rfie of Nevada." 

Texas is as large as seven of the largest 
States in the Union. It has had a wild and 
romantic history from its earliest settlement. 
The native Texan has much reason to be 
proud of his State, and as a rule he is. It 
is a grand State in many respects. In recent 
years it has developed with wonderful ra- 
pidity. 

In this great State of nearly a thousand 
miles square, I have had even more than in 
Nevada of frontier life, and some of it was 
quite exciting. Shortly after my arrival I 
came pretty near getting shot. I was on my 
way to Presbytery on horseback and had 
about three hundred miles to travel. 

One day I came to a river overflowing and 
red as paint with the red soil of the country. 
There was no bridge, and I had to swim it. 
So in order to keep my sermons dry I 
stripped, and tying them up in my clothing, 



TEXAS. 12 1 

I tied the bundle behind my neck, jumped 
into the saddle and plunged in. On reach- 
ing the other side, my horse could not 
scramble upon the bank and I swam it down 
a half a mile, looking for an easy landing 
place. Just as I was about to reach such a 
spot, I saw a man and woman in a field near 
by, she running to the house and he running 
with his gun towards me. He fired, and I 
threw up my hands, shouting for dear life not 
to kill me. He then came down to the river 
bank and helped my horse and his rider out 
of the water. The water of the river being 
red, my skin was red also, and the honest 
farmer took me for a Comanche, for he never 
before heard of or saw a white man strip 
to swim a river. I told him I was a preacher 
going to Presbytery and stripped to keep my 
sermons dry. He laughed heartily and pro- 
posed that I remain overnight, and he would 
gather in the neighbors to see if my sermons 
were wet or dry. I remained over and 
preached, and at the close of the service he 
got up and said that my sermons were not 
dry at all, and of course were not fit to be 
carried in my saddlebags ; that I had better 



122 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

wait over a few days till they got dry. But 
I had to go, for there were other rivers to 
cross and many miles before mxe. Those 
people so far out on the frontier were an in- 
telligent and kindly people. They were from 
the old Southern States mostly, and a sermon 
once in a while from a passing preacher was 
to them like an oasis in the desert. 

As a rule, the early Texas settler was 
strong in the faith. Uncle Joe Harrison was 
a veteran Mexican soldier, a fair specimen of 
a frontier Christian, and a good Methodist, 
but he went a-roving one day and fell from 
grace, and they excommunicated him. Com- 
ing into my church- on the following Sunday, 
he stood up and, pointing to heaven, shouted, 
" They may put the old man out of the church 
below, but his name is written up yonder ! " 



CHAPTER XVI. 

THE COWBOY. 

T^HE old-time Texas cowboy, like the old 
-■■ miners of the Pacific Coast, is passing 
away. The Texas cowboy of to-day is a 
spoiled man, like the sailor of to-day. The 
one is still at home in the saddle, and the 
other on the deck, but the wire fence has 
ruined Dick, and the steam engine has done 
the same to Jack. 

The real Texas cowboy was not, as a rule, 
a native. He came there because he was 
wanted somewhere else. Sometimes you 
would find him well educated and a graduate 
of some of our Northern colleges or those of 
England. Generally speaking, he was reck- 
less, would ride his horse into a saloon and 
pop away at the bottles and mirrors, or per- 
haps paint a town red in the night. He 
dearly loved to wear leather breeches, wide- 
brimmed hats, and carry a revolver in his 

belt. 

123 



124 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

When sober he was a good-natured fellow 
and very companionable on the prairie, but 
when drunk you had better put as much 
prairie between you and him as possible. 
When he got religion he got it on a large 
scale. There, for instance, was Jerry Simpson. 
When Jerry got religion he claimed that he was 
as good as any man mentioned in the Bible. 
His fellow cowboys maintained that he was 
not, for they could not believe that he was as 
good as Jesus. Jerry maintained that he 
was, and would prove it if they put him to the 
test. So they put a rope around his neck 
and led him to a place of trial, spitting on 
him, cuffing him and calling him all sorts of 
vile names. They put a crown of prickly 
pears on his brow and mocked him. But 
Jerry was meek and lowly, blessing those who 
cursed him, and forgiving those who smote 
him. At last they made a large cross, tied it 
on his back, and led him up the side of a hill 
to crucify him. He was still like a lamb 
being led to the slaughter, as he said, but 
one of the boys, who was more wicked than 
his companions, struck him in the face with a 
rotten egg. Jerry stood still, wiped slowly 



THE COWBOY. I 25 

the egg from his face and said, '' Boys, this 
Jesus business is over. Take off the cross." 
They did so, and then there was a stampede 
of those boys, such as only cowboys know, 
when a herd of cattle take fright. The 
swearing and tearing of Jerry after those 
unbelievers that day were long remembered 
in the neighborhood. 

There were cunning rogues among those 
Texas cowboys too, just as among the Nevada 
miners. The Texas bird was very fond of a 
good horse, and he envied any who might 
possess one. 

Sam Johnson, of Scrub Oak Valley, came 
to me one day and said : '* Parson Riley, we 
be mighty bad sinners out in our valley, that 
we be. We need prayin' for powerfully bad, 
that we do. We needs the gospel out thar as 
bad as we need rain for our crops and grass 
for our critters, an' there is no one to give it 
to us but Sister Henson, an' she's a shoutin' 
Methodist. We will all o-q to hell but Sister 
Henson if we don't get the gospel. W^e 
likes the Presbyterian Gospel, an' we wants 
you to come out an' give it to us. We thinks 
it's more savin' than the Baptist or Methodist. 



126 TWENTY- FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

We wants you to brand us with your gospel 
irons, for we be running wild like mustangs 
in the woods. We want you, Parson, to 
lasso us, and burn the gospel onto us ; and 
Sister Henson will take care of you over the 
night." 

What preacher could reject such a Mace- 
donian call for religion? The time and place 
being fixed on, Sam returned to Scrub Oak 
Valley with bright visions. At the appointed 
time I was on hand, lariated my horse out on 
the prairie, preached to the '' mustangs," and 
put myself under the protecting wing of 
Sister Henson for the night. 

Before the next daylight my fine bay horse 
left for the Indian nation, taking unholy Sam 
on its back, and I had to foot it home twenty 
miles. I fear that I did not brand the cun- 
ning mustang deep enough. He did not 
make much of it, however, for I had him 
arrested and tried. He got five years in the 
penitentiary, and while working out his time, 
with a squad of other prisoners, made a 
break for liberty and was shot dead by the 
guard. 

Sometimes the Texas cowboy had an eye 



THE COWBOY. 1 27 

to the main chance, and when he did, he in- 
creased greatly in weahh, and is now perhaps 
a banker. 

There, for instance, is old Bill Taylor of 
Dallas. Before the war he might be seen 
prowling through the cedar brakes of Palo 
Pinto, and you would not give five cents for 
all that was on him, with his carcass thrown in. 
And as for school learning, if it had the 
smallpox, he v/ould n't have caught it. But 
Bill kept on running cattle for wages, and 
when he could conveniently do so, branded 
a few yearlings for himself. Then the war 
broke out, and every patriotic citizen took to 
the field of blood, but Bill took to preaching 
and branding mavericks. While others were 
laying waste and destroying life. Bill would 
be spreading himself, the gospel, and his 
cattle over all the land. 

He took his branding irons in one hand 
and the Bible in the other, and he made a 
wonderful impression in favor of Bill Taylor. 
He had more faith in the Bible and branding 
irons than he had in the sword for the exten- 
sion of Bill's kingdom. Sometimes on a Sun- 
day, when he would be preaching in the woods 



128 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

to his fellow-sinners, a passing maverick 
would be spied. A stampede of the congre- 
gation would follow, and foremost in the fray 
would be Bill, throwing the lariat and claim- 
ing the beast as his for the collection. The 
time came when Bill's cattle roamed and ate 
grass all over Northwestern Texas, and to- 
day he is worth his millions, has a bank, and 
lives in lordly style. There has always been 
more religion in Texas than in Nevada. 

This can be proven by the prayer offered 
by old Tim White, a cow man, when hostile 
Indians surrounded his house and he felt that 
his hour of reckoning had come. Here it is : 
" O Lord, thou knowest that I have been bap- 
tized twice ; that I have kept the faith, and 
entertained the preachers. Everything is 
straight but the cow book. Square it, good 
Lord, and then let the Indians shoot." In 
the cow book was recorded the number of 
cattle branded. It was considered square 
when a man branded only his own year- 
lines. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

TRICKY FELLOWS. 

nPHEY were tricky dogs also, those Texas 
^ cowboys. If I rode with them on the 
prairies, they would be sure to come to rivers 
where we would have to swim our horses. 
They liked to see the parson get under the 
water, for, somehow or other, they had more 
faith in his preaching when they knew that 
he had been immersed. 

My horse at first was a little afraid of 
water, being a good Presbyterian, but he got 
used to it and rather liked the fun and 
exhilaration of the plunge. 

Having preached for several days in a 
town near the Red River, I left to return 
home. I was gone about three miles, when 
a deputy sheriff came galloping after me 
with a warrant for my arrest, charging me 
with stealing a bridle. I protested, but 
searching my saddlebags, sure enough, he 
found the bridle. I was led back to the 



130 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

Court House in shame and confusion of face, 
and placed before the justice of the peace, 
who gravely heard the charge against me 
and my plea of innocency. Then he summed 
up with all the seriousness imaginable, pro- 
nouncing me guilty, and sentenced me to 
preach to the boys for a week, which I did, 
and I trust to their good. It was all a cow- 
boy's lark. In another town, shortly after I 
went to Texas, the young men of the place 
insisted one night that I should go out hunt- 
ing with them. They wanted to bag, they 
said, a certain bird in that country that could 
not fly, for it had but very short wings. 
Believing the rogues, I went with them. 
When we got about two miles out of town, 
they stopped at the foot of a tall hill and 
said : " Now, Parson Riley, this is the way 
we hunt these birds : You stay here and 
hold this empty sack over this sheep trail, 
and we will go up to the top of the hill and 
drive them down into your sack. They can't 
see in the night, but they will run along this 
little trail into the open mouth of the sack, 
and when it is full, whistle to us." I waited 
all night holding the open mouth of that 



TRICKY FELLOWS. I3I 

sack over the sheep trail, and went home in 
the morning feeHng that I wanted to — well, 
preach to somebody. 

Great was the cowboy's love of playing 
pranks on a stranger from the old States, 
especially if said stranger was disposed to 
put on airs. A St. Louis drummer realized 
this once to his mortification in the town I 
lived in. He came westward from Fort 
Worth City in a stylish buggy drawn by a fine 
span of horses, and for his guide a negro 
driver in livery. Putting up at one of our 
hotels, he requested the landlady to give him 
a suite of her best rooms for dining and 
sleeping in, as he was "a first-class com- 
mercial traveler representing a first-class 
house in St. Louis," and did not care to eat 
his food in the common dining-room. The 
obliging old lady complied, but told the boys, 
who went to the sheriff and swore out a 
warrant against him for stealing his buggy 
and horses. He was taken and placed in 
the county jail in spite of his protestations 
that he was a first-class commercial traveler, 
representing a first-class house in St. Louis, 
and innocent of horse stealing. Procuring a 



132 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

lawyer at a cost of five hundred dollars, he 
appeared for trial before the county judge 
on the morrow. By this time judge, sheriff, 
prosecuting attorney, and all were in the plot 
to teach this uppish drummer to eat with 
common folks and put up with such quarters 
as the country might afford. A jury was 
regularly impaneled, and before it the 
county attorney made a scathing speech 
against the prisoner, who, he said, went 
about among simple-minded Texans, putting 
on airs, stealing horses, and pretending to be 
selling St. Louis goods when he really should 
be in the penitentiary. It was one of the most 
eloquent and denunciatory frontier speeches 
I ever listened to, and the poor prisoner 
fairly quailed under it. The attorney for the 
defence was no less, apparently, earnest for 
his client's rescue from the clutches of the 
law. '' Gentlemen of the jury," he would 
say, while he slapped the prisoner's bald head 
till it blistered, " can you for a moment 
imagine that this gentleman, this first-class 
commercial traveler from St. Louis, would 
be guilty of such a thing as horse stealing ? 
Why, gentlemen, look at that noble brow ; 



TRICKY FELLOWS. 1 33 

look at these kindly eyes ; look at the elegant 
dress and refined manners of my client." 
In this strain, for at least half cin hour, he 
pathetically pleaded for the prisoner s release. 
Then, after the prosecuting attorney had 
spoken again, the judge began summing up. 
He did fairly well for about five minutes, 
when he broke out into a wild burst of 
laughter and ran from the Court House. 
The sheriff, the lawyers, the jury, and the 
assembled crowd followed suit, roaring with 
laughter. The astonished prisoner was left 
alone to realize that it was all a practical 
joke. It, however, taught him to be a little 
more lowly in his manners when he came to 
our village again. 

Sam Crowley was a born cowboy, and 
raised in the saddle from childhood. A 
jovial, good-natured fellow was Sam, with a 
smiling face ; and an extraordinary cheek to 
it made Sam in the course of time one of 
the principal cattle men of Northwestern 
Texas, and a deacon in my church. His 
little boy, who did not understand the impor- 
tance of his father's ecclesiastical standing, 
used to go about telling with pride to other 



134 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

boys that his " dad " was the " dickins in the 
church," and I had to teach him the great 
difference there was between '' deacon" and 
*' dickins." 

Sam Crowley was a generous, Hberal- 
hearted man and used to brand a yearhng 
for me, for every sermon I preached. Minis- 
ters of the gospel were honored for their 
work's sake in Texas as they are not up here 
in the North. I will always reckon Sam as 
among the best of deacons I have yet met 
anywhere. He was none of your small men, 
but a whole-souled, good fellow who would 
give you his last dollar if you were in need, 
whether it was his own money or somebody 
else's capital. 

In an evil hour a number of his fellow- 
cattle men, believing that the gentlemanly 
manners, the ecclesiastical standing, and the 
good name of this pillar of my church was 
just the man they wanted to go on a mission 
to England where the people were all sup- 
posed to be Christians, and had more money 
than they knew what to do with, came to him 
with letters of credit and said, " Go, and the 
Lord be with thee " ; and he went. The 



i 



TRICKY FELLOWS. I35 

object of the mission was not exactly reli- 
gious, or political, but financial. 

In London Sam lived at one of the grand- 
est hotels of the city, in style becoming a 
deacon of my church, and the land and cattle 
interests of Northern Texas. It was nothing^ 
less than the organization of a mammoth 
Anglo-Texan Land and Cattle Company 
that was in view ; a company that would 
be given millions of acres and the cattle 
of a thousand hills. 

The titled nobility, both political and 
ecclesiastical, took to Sam as if a very 
brother. They dined and wined this simple- 
hearted prairie deacon of mine in style such 
as he never had dreamed of enjoying in this 
life. 

Dining with Lord Thurlow, the queen's 
head chamberlain, at his castle, he actually 
had twelve courses of the best '' grub," he 
told me, that any mortal man ever ate, served 
by a waiter dressed in a red coat with gold 
buttons, knee breeches, silk stockings, slip- 
pers on his feet and a powdered wig on his 
head ; and he had him, too, all to himself, 
standing behind his chair and attending to 



136 TWENTY- FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

him as if he were a prince of the blood. 
There were ten or twelve others present, 
dukes and lords, as well as Lord Thurlow, 
and each had, like himself, a waiter to change 
his gold plates and fill his glasses. 

In describing this grand occasion said he, 
" Never will I forget that dinner ; you could n't 
get the like of it in Texas if you paid a thou- 
sand dollars for it." In return for the hospi- 
talities shown, Sam was generous, for there 
was nothing small about him, and at his 
hotel he entertained some of the "swellest 
Britishers" in the kingdom. He contem- 
plated inviting even the queen to his din- 
ners, but the Prince of Wales told him that 
she had the rheumatism at the time. 

The result of it all was that the great 
Texas Cattle Company was formed with Lord 
Thurlow as president. There was an im- 
mense rush for the stock, lest the Scotch or 
American capitalists should get hold of it 
first. So that Texas Cattle Company and 
Sam Crowley were on the lip and in the 
heart of every Englishman who had money 
to lend with a view to getting twenty-five 
per cent, interest for it instead of three per 



TRICKY FELLOWS. I37 

cent, in home investments. The board of 
managers met one night when they were 
ready to pay Sam his commission, which was 
sixty thousand dollars, also to hand over the 
first instalment on the Texas property, which 
was one million dollars, and also to have 
papers signed making Sam the manager of 
the concern at twenty thousand dollars a 
year. 

Everything was moving along beautifully, 
and the words of wisdom that dropped from 
Sam's lips were like honey from the honey- 
comb, when, sad to relate, an "old heathen 
Scotch banker," doing business in London, 
suggested that before they signed papers or 
handed over this enormous amount of money 
to a man they had never seen before, they 
had better first send two practical men, who 
had been to Texas and knew the laws there, 
to examine the deeds to the land and count 
the cattle. Sam's heart went down to his 
boots and his face lost its glow, but it would 
never do for him to object in case he might " be 
arrested and put in the Tower," so he " spoke 
as philosophically as he could," and kept 
his countenance straight till he got outside 



138 TWENTY- FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

and then skipped with the first steamer 
to America, and such was his haste that he 
forgot to pay his hotel bill till he got home. 
The telegrams arriving every day for the 
cattle men of Texas, up to this disastrous 
point, were so full of cheer that arrange- 
ments had been actually made, including a 
brass band, to give the successful financier a 
tremendous reception when the train arrived 
at Fort Bellnapp, his home. He was to be 
taken through the main streets of the city in 
a carriage drawn by four white horses. But 
the deacon did not believe in such worldly 
displays and slipped out on arrival at the back 
end of the train and was lost in the darkness 
of night before any one could see him. He 
was waited upon on the following day by the 
party who sent him to present their congratu- 
lations, and that party was again on the same 
day waited upon by a messenger from the 
Bank of England for fifty thousand dollars, 
the same being what was spent by it in keep- 
ing up Sam's credit. 

Sam was a very humble, good Christian 
man after his trip to London, and that is 
more than most Christians can say, and those 



TRICKY FELLOWS. 1.39 

pious cattle men who tempted him to develop 
the beautiful idea of fleecing the English 
lords, got fleeced themselves instead, for 
they had to pay the good deacon's expenses, 
and when the hard-hearted, cruel investi- 
gators came and saw what there was of the 
land, the cattle, and the deeds they went 
back and told the great Anglo-Texan Land 
and Cattle Company to let the Lone Star 
State alone, and turn their attention to 
Africa ; which they did. 

A good many people to-day, both in the 
North, in Scotland, and England, wish that 
they had never invested a dollar in Texas 
lands and Texas cattle. People should look 
before they jump. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

DANGEROUS FELLOWS. 

"D IDING into a lazy-looking town not far 
-'-^ from the Rio Grande River one day, I 
hitched my horse to a post opposite a saloon 
and was about to hunt up the postoffice, 
when a crowd of the toughs of the place 
gathered about me, asking where I came 
from. They then invited me to come in and 
have a drink with them. I declined. '' Wall," 
they said, " there 's galls and tobacco and 
cards in har." I declined again with thanks. 
" Do you never drink whiskey, play cards, or 
go with the galls ? " said a murderous-looking 
rascal. I again answered in the negative. 
'' He 's a tenderfoot ! " shouted another ; 
''let's chuck him in the river." ''Do you 
ever steal cattle ? " asked still another. I 
said "No." " Do you pray ? " "Yes." "Go 
to Sunday-school ? " " Yes." " Gad, yer a 
preacher!" "That's what I am, boys," I 
replied. " Well, b' Gad, turn her loose. 

140 



DANGEROUS FELLOWS. I4I 

Let 's have a sermon so as we can write home 
that we 's been to church." '' All right, boys, 
round 'em up ! " I said. In an hour or so 
there were several hundred of as hard a look- 
ing crowd before me in a hall over the saloon, 
as I ever looked upon, and I preached them 
one of my best sermons, to which they lis- 
tened attentively, but an old negro who was 
present upset everything. In my closing 
prayer I prayed fervently that the Lord 
would curtail the power of Satan in that 
place, and the old darky shouted, *'Yes, 
Lord, cut 'im's tail off cl'ar up to the ears ! " 
There was an immediate stampede down- 
stairs, and when I got through there were 
only myself and my black brother present. 
I lost the collection too. 

The Rev. Frank Waters was preaching in 
Texas when I went there. He was a Presby- 
terian preacher now, but used to be an officer 
in the Confederate Army during the war. 
He was a splendid fellow and was popular 
with the boys wherever he went. But, like 
myself, he would occasionally lose a horse 
at the hands of thieving cutthroats. Doing 
missionary work not far from the Red River, 



142 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

which separates Texas from the Indian nation, 
his horse was stolen one evening while he 
was at supper, and it made him wish that he 
was back in the army again. A dozen or so 
of the young men of the place buckled on 
their revolvers, and followed him out into the 
country to hunt for the thief. 

They spied him going at an easy trot about 
four miles out. Pretending that they were 
going to pass him on the gallop, one of them 
dashed up close and jerked the revolver from 
the thief's belt. Quick as lightning another 
lassoed him, and in that condition drove on 
till they came to a large oak tree. Making 
him ride in below it, the rope was soon over 
a limb and fastened to a stump in the ground. 
The boys then looked at the parson and asked 
him what he was going to do with his horse. 
''Well," said the parson, ''it is none of my 
business how that thief got into that saddle. 
I am going to take my horse ; " and so saying 
took hold of the bridle and led his horse 
away. The man with the lariat about his 
neck having neither saddle to sit on nor 
earth to stand on, could not draw his breath, 
and died. 



DANGEROUS FELLOWS. 1 43 

When they went back home it was asked 
who did the hanging. The man who took 
the revolver out of the belt said he did not ; 
the man who threw the lariat over his neck 
said he did not ; the man who threw it over 
the limb said he did not ; the man who tied 
it to the stump said he did not ; and the par- 
son said he did not ; he only took his horse, 
which he had a right to do wherever he found 
it. Just who did the hanging the com- 
munity could not decide, and did not care. 
They told the sheriff that the man must have 
put his head in the noose himself by accident, 
and the sheriff left him there for a week, 
dangling in the wind, in the hopes that others 
of his tribe might go and do likewise. But 
they did n't, they skipped the country. The 
thief was a very bad character any way, and 
had several nicks in the ivory handle of his 
revolver, that were to keep him in mind of the 
number he had killed. He was a desperado 
of the worst sort, and neither the preacher nor 
those who helped him had any other feeling 
than that they had done their duty. The 
country was better off with the thief's head 
in the noose than his legs in the saddle, and 



144 TWENTY- FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

all the people thanked the parson for his 
good sense, and attended his preaching 
better than they ever did before. 

Eating my noonday meal on the banks of a 
stream one hot day in summer, a young man 
came riding along the main road near by, 
and invited himself to partake with me. I 
made no objections, for I was lonely, the 
nearest settlement being twenty miles away. 
He was very companionable, and told me 
that he was from the North, but left there 
for some reason he did not tell me. He 
was going to the same town, too, that I 
was, so after we had rested in the shade a 
while, we mounted and rode at a fast trot. 
When we came within a mile of the place 
he wheeled his horse about, and, with re- 
volver in hand, said: " Fork over your gold 
watch and everything else that glitters, or 
you 're a dead goner ! Am Jack Shephard ! " 

He was a highwayman and I did not 
know it. There was nothing for me but to 
obey orders ; and I did so, like a soldier. 
When he had all my valuables he told me 
to ride on to town, and if I told on him he 
would waylay and kill me on the morrow. 



DANGEROUS FELLOWS. 1 45 

I rode on and told every one I met. In an 
hour or so I was riding with a brave band 
of men in search of him. We got on his 
trail and came up close to him, but he had 
a magnificent horse and he bade us good by. 
He went, unfortunately for him, in the 
direction of a town to which we could tele- 
graph, and we did so, to the sheriff of that 
county. He did n't know that we could 
do so, and when he was drinking his cof- 
fee next morning at the suburbs of the 
place the sheriff came on him with a posse 
of well-armed men and called to him to sur- 
render. 

Jack Shephard showed fight, and he got 
it. When it was over the sheriff dug a 
hole and put him in it, and his mother in the 
North is still wondering why her boy who 
went to Texas don't write her. 

On another occasion I was returning from 
one of my preaching stations through a 
lonely wood, when I was met on the high- 
way by two men on foot, carrying guns upon 
their shoulders, who were arrayed in Indian 
blankets and had their faces daubed with 
paint. At sight of them my horse trembled 



146 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

in every fibre of its body and refused to 
advance. 

I confess that I myself did not feel in any 
bolder frame of mind, and would gladly 
have wheeled about and run, but for the 
fact that I was at least ten miles from any 
setdement to the rear of me, and a bullet 
from their guns could easily catch me. I 
therefore concluded to urge my horse on 
and take my chances. Coming up to the 
would-be Indians, who now stood still in 
the middle of the road and eyed myself and 
horse in anything but a kindly manner, 
I could see that they were really white men. 
Indeed, they were hard, suspicious, ugly- 
looking tramps of the worst character, as I 
could see the closer I got to them. One of 
them took hold of the bridle and remarked 
to his companion that my horse resembled 
very much the one they had lost, and look- 
ing up at me, asked where did I get it. I 
replied that it was none of his business where 
I got it, and to let go the bridle instantly or 
I would blow his brains out, and made with 
my right hand as if I would pull a revolver 
from my hip pocket. Then, quick as thought, 



DANGEROUS FELLOWS. 147 

I planted the spurs in the flanks of my fleet- 
footed beast, and Hke a flash of Hghtning it 
sprang forward, pitching one of the rascals 
aside and the other on his back. It was a 
critical moment, and what was to be done had 
to be done quickly ; and instinct seemed to 
teach my horse the same truth, for it ran with 
almost the swiftness of a bird through space, 
while its rider, casting himself forward, hung 
on to its neck by his right arm and to its back 
by his right leg, Indian fashion, thus putting 
himself in a safer position in case they fired 
on him. This they did not fail to do as 
soon as they got themselves righted. One 
bullet struck a tree as I passed it, and 
another whistled over my head unpleasantly 
near. Three or four shots were fired alto- 
gether, but fortunately none of them struck 
me. My assailants were dangerous tramps, 
who probably knew that I would be com- 
ing that Monday morning that way, so fixed 
themselves up as they did, with a view to 
frightening me into giving them my horse on 
demand, but the plot miscarried. It did n't 
pay always to fool with the preachers in 
Texas. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

TRAIN AND LAND ROBBERS. 

T^RAIN robbing used to be as common 
■^ in Texas a few years back, as stage 
coach robbing was in Nevada twenty-five 
years ago. 

Indeed in Texas this daring business 
seemed to flourish for a time as nowhere 
else, and the robbers became bold and fat 
on it. Not far from where I preached, they 
used to stop the Texas Pacific Railroad 
trains, get on board and go through the cars, 
one holding his hat, and two behind him 
with cocked revolvers, saying, *' Contribute 
to the poor." And in this way they usually 
got a hatful of money, for the passengers, 
both male and female, were only too glad 
to contribute to have them pass on. Those 
bold knights of the road, too, seemed to 
know in advance when there was something 
valuable in the mail bags, for they invariably 
struck it rich when they ripped open Uncle 

148 



TRAIN AND LAND ROBBERS. 1 49 

Sam's leather bags. That wild, broken 
country you see in passing through Palo 
Pinto was generally their headquarters, and 
there it was supposed they lived in style, after 
the manner of the knights of old in Europe. 
So frequent did these robberies become, that 
I used to keep a sharp eye on the collection 
box after sermon till the benediction was pro- 
nounced, lest they should make a dash for it. 

We used to have lots of small lawyers and 
real estate agents who were very dishonest, 
too, in Texas. I knew one who"* fraudulently 
claimed a few hundred acres of land north of 
Fort Worth, and he had the cheek to measure 
it off into lots and streets and erect a great 
signboard with hands painted on it, one point- 
ing to New York and the other to San Fran- 
cisco. He then published all over the North 
and West that he owned this '* city" through 
which a through train from New York to 
San Francisco would pass immediately. The 
whole scheme was fraudulent, but he made 
lots of money before the location of his city 
lots and his rascality were found out. 

This same lawyer, to my knowledge, was 
often guilty of setting neighbor against 



150 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

neighbor, that he might make a fee defend- 
ing either of them in court. Two intimate 
friends of mine, one an EngHshman and the 
other a Scotchman, both farmers, had a Httle 
difference over a cow, and finding it out, he 
went to the EngHshman and told him that 
for five dollars he could make his the cow in 
dispute. Once in court, the cow was kept 
there until more than twice her value was 
spent on lawyers. The Scotchman finally 
got possession of the cow, but that did not 
end the trouble, for on meeting afterwards, 
the Englishman pulled his little cannon and 
shot the Scotchman in the left leg about the 
knee so badly that he (the Scotchman) lost 
one half of said limb ; and for mischievous 
fooling with firearms the Englishman got 
one year in the penitentiary. Nor did this 
wholly end the trouble, for a certain preacher 
of the place, who was full of holy indignation 
at the wicked lawyer for the part he had 
played in bringing on the trouble between 
the two honest country neighbors, coming 
up to him one day when he was standing 
with his back against the Court House, planted 
his left hand under his chin, pinning him 



TRAIN AND LAND ROBBERS. I5I 

to the wall, and rained sledge-hammer blows 
on his face, quoting as he did so certain 
suitable passages of Scripture. While this 
operation was going on, the lawyer kept 
yelling to "those looking on, ''Take him off 
there ; take him off there," but they did n't 
until the preacher got through with him. 
Then it was the preacher's turn to be hauled 
into court for mischievously bruising the 
lawyer's face, and he was fined ten dollars 
and costs ; but so pleased were the good 
people of his church with his spunk, that 
they paid all the expenses incurred. 

I would not justify this mode of administer- 
ing the law and the gospel in all similar cases 
when the wicked lawyers deserve it, and yet 
there may be times when this is the best and 
only method of reaching their conscience. 

I had one of these gentry in my church 
down there. He was even an elder and 
a Sabbath-school superintendent. He was 
from Indiana, and his name was Jacobs. 
This one-horse lawyer, when he first came to 
us, lived on a farm of ten acres, just outside 
the county seat, but that little farm grew to 
a thousand acres, yet Jacobs was not happy. 



152 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

He ate mush and milk three times a day, and 
his wife mended his old blue jeans every 
morning. Still he was inconsolable. Over 
the way was Naboth Washington, and he 
had a goodly little farm of eighty acres. 
Jacobs coveted Naboth's vineyard, and his 
heart was weary within him, and his life 
was a sore burden to him. One day, while 
looking over the fence, a beautiful and bril- 
liant idea struck him, just such as used to come 
to him away up in Indiana. Then said he to 
himself: '' I will take my plow and cover it 
up in yonder ditch by his barn, then I will 
publish that some one has stolen it ; and 
then with a witness I will stumble accident- 
ally on it in the old darky's ditch. After that 
I will have him arrested and put in jail. Then 
Naboth will be glad to sign me a deed for his 
farm to get out." The idea developed into 
realization, and one morning Jacobs entered 
the prison cell where Naboth was weeping 
and waiting for trial and said : '' Here, nigger, 
sign this deed or I will send you five years to 
the penitentiary, and mind you don't tell this 
to any one — not to a living soul, or I will put 
a bullet in you." '* Yes, massa; bress de Lord, 



TRAIN AND LAND ROBBERS. 1 53 

Ise sign it an' nebber tell nobody neither," 
replied the poor old darky, wiping his eyes. 
Many months passed, and Naboth let the 
pig out of the bag, and it ran round the 
whole town, telling how Naboth lost his farm 
and how Jacobs found it. I had Jacobs re- 
lieved of the care of the Sunday-school, tried 
before the church session, and expelled. 
But Jacobs was industrious as well as dark in 
some of his ways, and he went among his 
friends in a slow, lazy fashion, and spoke 
against me as a disturber of the church and 
a shepherd that was not able to feed the 
flock. And — how strange life is ! — some of 
the very people who shouted most for his trial 
and punishment were the first to side with 
him and against me. So I bade that church 
good by, and I suppose they have Jacobs as 
shepherd, feeding them now. The preacher 
who will do his whole duty towards the goats 
of the flock will very often come to grief. 
If the goats would remain goats after you 
have separated them from the sheep, it would 
be all right, but they won't ; they become 
wolves in sheep's clothing. Such is the 
transforming power of Satan in the church. 



CHAPTER XX. 

LONELY TRAVELING. 

nPRAVELING alone through the wild 
^ woods of Northwestern Texas twenty 
years ago was dreary business, and when 
it rained it was doubly so. One night I 
came to a log cabin by the roadside and 
asked permission to stay there overnight, 
as both myself and horse were tired and 
hungry. The man who came to the gate 
was deaf and dumb, but he understood my 
wants, and, taking the bridle of my horse, 
motioned to me to go inside. On entering, 
I was met by an old lady, who was also deaf 
and dumb. She had a strange look about 
her, and when she saw that I was dripping 
wet she gave me a jerk up to the fire and 
motioned to me to stand there. In the mean 
time she went into the kitchen to prepare 
supper for me, but now and then she would 
come running out, run her hand down the 
side of me next the fire, and, if it was dry, 

IS4 



LONELY TRAVELING. I 55 

she would give me a jerk round a bit. I 
confess that her operations made me sus- 
picious, for it dawned upon my mind that it 
was just in that neigborhood that a traveler, 
while asleep In a cabin by the roadside not 
long before, was murdered for his money. 

The squealing and strange signs between 
mother and son, and the old lady's feeling of 
me up and down, made me conclude that 
it was all to find out if I had any of the 
precious metal about me. When I ate sup- 
per I went to bed, but did not sleep any, the 
least noise during the night making me feel 
that my last hour had come. 

Next morning four of us sat down to 
breakfast ; the old man whom I did not see 
the evening before having introduced him- 
self, telling me that his wife and son were 
mutes, and then having asked the blessing, 
he asked what my business might be. I 
told him, and he expressed his regret that 
he did not know it sooner, as we might have 
had a preaching service at his house that 
morning. The surroundings were rough 
and the looks of the whole family were in 
keeping, but for all that they were a kindly, 



156 TWENTY -FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

Christian people, who did their utmost to 
make me comfortable, and would take 
nothing for their services either. 

The diamond in the rough is diamond all 
the same. 

On another occasion, and several hundred 
miles from there, I came to a cabin on the 
prairie about midnight, where an old Scotch- 
man and his wife lived and cultivated a 
small farm. 

There was a furious rainstorm raging, 
and the nearest house was at least five miles 
away ; the road was all mud, and my poor 
beast, like myself, no doubt felt that we had 
traveled far enough to deserve a few hours' 
rest under a roof. 

I knocked at the door, and to the question 
'' Wha 's there ? " from a man in a bed inside, 
I replied that it was a passing traveler who 
desired to get inside for the night. " Weel, 
just keep passing on," said he. I protested 
and begged to be admitted at any cost, but to 
no purpose. Knowing by his broad Scotch 
that he was from the land of the heather, I 
told him that I was from there too, but the 
reply came quickly back : " Na, na ; nae 



LONELY TRAVELING. I 57 

good Scotchman would be oot at this time 
o' nicht." 

I remonstrated against his conclusion, and 
thinking that I could surely move him 
through the old kirk, I told him that I was 
a Presbyterian minister, and a Scotch one at 
that ; but the crushing response was : " Then 
gae wa aboot yer business, and may the 
muckle De'il catch you, for the last preacher 
wha was here stole my Bible." That was a 
clincher, and I made up my mind to keep 
plodding on my way. I had not gone far 
when the thought struck me that he might 
be a Freemason, and I went back and gave 
the Masonic knocks and the cry of a brother 
in distress. That went home to the right 
place and brought him with a bound from 
his bed to the door, where he gave me the 
Masonic grip and bade me welcome in the 
name of King Solomon and all the ancient 
saints of the fraternity. 

Then turning to his wife he said : '' Get 
up, Jennet ; get up, woman, and put on the 
kettle. This is a gentleman, an' no' like the 
scrub that took oor Bible." 

The best that was in the house that night 



158 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

was mine, and the best in the stable was my 
horse's, all because the old man and I were 
bound together, not by blood or religion, but 
by the mystic tie. It is good to have more 
than one arrow in your quiver if you are 
traveling in a wild frontier country. 

I have known many instances in which the 
grip of a Freemason pulled through trouble 
when nothing else would. 

The Freemason's goat may butt hard at 
the lodge door before it lets you enter, but 
after you are inside, it changes into a lion for 
your defence. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

THE CHANGED SCENE. 

\ Jl 7HILE riding once in the neighborhood 
^ ^ of the Indian nation I stopped for 
shelter overnight at a house to which I was 
recommended. The night was dark and my 
nag and self were nearly played out, for I 
was sleepy and hungry, and it was lame and 
tired. 

A thin, tallow-faced lass of perhaps twenty 
years sat by the fireside. She was dressed 
in colors so loud that I could not help laugh- 
ing in her face, and asking what was the 
matter. She was a bride that night and was 
waiting for the arrival of the bridegroom. 
Oh, she was so happy ! so proud of her 
'' noble, dearly beloved Romeo " who would 
come shortly. She quoted poetry in his 
praise by the yard, and named him after all 
the distinguished heroes of fiction. She 
spoke of him as having descended from a 
noble family in England who came over the 



l60 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

briny ocean and settled in Virginia long 
before the days of Wallace and Bruce. 
Indeed, she did not know but that she might 
some day herself be a countess, or a queen of 
Sheba. Poor thing ! her little head was away 
up among the stars while her big, flat feet 
were on the earth ! At last the dogs began 
to bark. '* Behold, the bridegroom cometh," 
she said, and rushing out to the gate, plunged 
into his arms with such demonstrations of 
joy that my horse, forgetting his lameness 
and his owner, galloped off at a rate to do 
credit to an Arab steed. The newcomer 
entered the cabin, arrayed in all the glories of 
field and forest, with his Sail hanging on his 
arm. He saluted the old folks in great style. 
He was a long, lean, lank, lounging sort of 
a mortal, and had with him a preacher, a 
fiddler, a bottle of whiskey, and a bag of 
candy. I left and went after my runaway 
quadruped which I found about two miles off 
at another farmhouse where we both put up 
for the night. 

A few years later I was driving through 
the same country, and going towards the 
same old house I observed a large number 



THE CHANGED SCENE. l6l 

of people running to it from the village near 
by. When I arrived I witnessed a sad sight. 
The old man and his daughter, the romantic 
bride of other days, were weeping and wail- 
ing over two dead bodies on the porch. 
They were shot just about ten or fifteen 
minutes before, and the blood was streaming 
from their wounds. The old man wept for a 
son, the daughter for a husband and brother. 
It seemed that they all lived together and 
not always on the best of term.s. The 
*' noble" bridegroom of former days, it ap- 
peared, found fault with his spouse because 
of her fictitious life generally. He told her 
that she was a very poor wife for a strug- 
gling man in the Southwest. " Dad " on the 
occasion stepped in and spoke a word for 
" Sail." Hot words passed and repassed be- 
tween father-in-law and son-in-law. To teach 
the father-in-law and his own wife a lesson 
in practical farming and obedience, the 
young husband drew his revolver and with a 
threat of instant death made both '' Dad " 
and " Sail " go out into the timothy patch and 
cut hay with their teeth. He kept them thus 
employed for an hour or so, in the hot sun, 



1 62 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

when Dick, a brother-in-law, arrived home 
and seeing what was being done in the 
timothy patch was roused to kill. 

There was an old buffalo gun in the house 
that had done good service in former years 
in Dick's hands. This he grasped, and put- 
ting a bullet into it large enough to kill a 
horse, sent it crushing through his brother-in- 
law's skull. The brother of this murdered 
boss, hearing what was done, armed himself 
for battle, and swore a solemn oath that he 
would kill Dick or die in the attempt. He 
lived in the village only a little ways off, and 
before Dick knew what he was about he had 
holes in him from head to foot. It was now 
the old man's turn to burn powder, and he 
got a bullet into the left leg of his son's mur- 
derer as he rode off. Two men dead and one 
wounded ! All over nothing, so to speak. 

Few in the East realize, when casting their 
gifts into the several treasuries for church 
building and Home Mission work generally 
in the West, how great is the good they do. 
Without the generosity of the East the wild 
West would be a good deal wilder than it is 
to-day. Church buildings and preachers of 



THE CHANGED SCENE. 1 63 

the gospel would be few indeed in those 
restless, godless communities if assistance 
did not come from without. Churches cost 
money on the frontier, but the money invested 
in them yields a hundred-fold in the uplifting 
of the people. In the region I went first to 
preach in, in Texas, when the Circuit Court 
met, the judge had to be surrounded by about 
twenty-five Texas rangers with loaded guns, 
while the horse thieves and murderers of the 
place were being tried. I remember well how 
glad that judge was on first meeting with me. 
He said, " The very presence of a gospel 
minister out here means even safety for the 
judge on the bench." So it turned out to be, 
in his case at least, for not long after the 
rangers were dispensed with in his court. 

The gospel minister is everywhere wel- 
comed in the rudest of those frontier com- 
munities, and his earnest labors are warmly 
appreciated by all. The first visible change 
is usually seen among the women. The old 
sunbonnet and the plain calico dress with 
which they first attend church are laid aside, 
and somethincr more like what is seen in the 

o 

old communities takes their place. The chil- 



164 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

dren respond at once and cluster with happy 
hearts around the preacher as once they did 
around his Master. The salvation of the 
wild West lies in the gospel of Jesus Christ 
and in good women from the civilized East. 
I mean no offence to the native frontier 
woman by this. She is the creature of cir- 
cumstances, over which she has no control. 
Her education and whole upbringing are such 
as to disqualify her for being the wife of a 
man who has been bred and raised in a more 
liberal and wider atmosphere. Misfortune 
generally it is to both parties when an Eastern 
man marries a woman bred and raised in the 
wild West. I speak from experience. The 
good book told me that a bishop should be 
the husband of one wife, and being a lonely 
bachelor bishop in Texas I married far out on 
the front a native girl. Somehow ever since 
Father Adam lost a rib in the making of 
woman, his sons have an aching void at the 
left side until that lost rib is replaced. I had 
at least, and putting that with what the Bible 
said, when I came across one whom I thought 
was mine and had her placed where I thought 
she belonged, I found to my sorrow, at the 



THE CHANGED SCENE. 1 65 

end of fifteen years, that she was not mine at 
all. If marriages are made in heaven, as it 
is said they are, they are strangely unmade 
on earth. Thirty thousand divorces a year in 
the United States are appalling ! One hun- 
dred recently in Chicago in one day ! 

In some parts of the Southwest the 
competition between certain cities for the 
shameful business is almost incredible. Cir- 
culars are sent out all over the land 
expatiating on the advantages they offer. 
Going down on the trains you are handed a 
card with this on it from some iniquitous 
lawyer: ''You are guaranteed absolute se- 
clusion in O City and freedom from 

inquisitive reporters there, and decrees are 
never published." You are told also that 
you might better yourself by discarding the 
present yoke and looking around. 

The change for the worse this degrading 
business is bringing about is alarming. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

THE UNLUCKY RANCH. 

/^"^ERTAIN spots of this earth, hke certain 
^^ individuals, seem somehow or other to 
be always unlucky, and everything done in 
connection with them turns out unfortu- 
nately. 

Journeying through a part of the Indian 
Nation with a companion, one upon whose 
head were thickly fallen the snows of years, 
we came to a very high bluff overlooking a 
winding stream and as beautiful a valley as 
eyes ever looked upon. 

"Let us stop here," said my friend, ''and 
look at this scene. You see yon large stone 
house and those stone fences reaching away 
in the distance. That 's the unlucky ranch, as 
they call it, and indeed it seems to have the 
curse of Heaven resting upon it. It has had 
a checkered history. Long ago when the 
United States government was establishing 
military posts through this country, Captain 

166 



THE UNLUCKY RANCH. I 67 

Lee, afterwards general of the Confederate 
Army, was marching with his troops along 
here, selecting suitable positions, when a 
great storm overtook them and they sought 
shelter under this bluff. The storm raged 
for many days and the soldiers, finding the 
caves below and the dens of the wild 
beasts so comfortable to live in, also fish 
and game so plentiful, that Lee concluded to 
remain and erect a post in yon field across 
the river, which he did. From the day that 
that post was started to this moment, trouble 
of some sort or other has been the lot of the 
place. Soldiers would quarrel and shoot each 
other down there ; they would get drowned 
with their horses while crossing the river, 
and the Indians would put arrows through 
them when they least expected it. By 
and by Lee was removed and Captain Davis, 
afterwards President of the Confederacy, 
was in command here. Being engaged as a 
medical missionary to the Indians out here in 
my young days, I knew both Lee and Davis 
very well. Lee was a noble, Christian young 
man and his troops thought all the world of 
him. I, myself, was much attached to him. 



1 68 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

It was not so with Davis. He was a haughty, 
selfish, cold-blooded disciplinarian, and cared 
as little for the comfort of his men as he did 
for the lives of the Indians, and as little for 
the lives of both as he did for that of the 
prowling panthers. I was located about 
forty miles from here, when a terrible and 
fatal disease broke out among his troops, 
and he despatched an orderly to me, asking 
if I would come of my own accord and 
doctor his men, or if he would press me 
into the service. I replied that there was no 
occasion for pressing me, -that I would gladly 
come if I could be of any service in saving 
human life. As soon as I could make 
arrangements for my work at home, I went to 
his fort to find the soldiers in a woeful state. 
My medicine had the desired effect in sav- 
ing some of the poor fellows, and when it was 
almost used up Davis wrote and sent me an 
order requesting some of my medicine for 
his sick horse. I refused to comply, explain- 
ing to him that I was nearly out of it and that 
before a new supply could be procured from 
the East that his men would be all dead. 
His orderly came straight back with a per- 



THE UNLUCKY RANCH. 1 69 

emptory demand that I hand him over my 
medicine at once. I again decHned and he 
sent two soldiers who arrested and placed me 
in the guardhouse. I immediately sent off 
a despatch to the Secretary of War at Wash- 
ington, protesting against my treatment, and 
a message came quickly back apologizing 
to me, another to Davis ordering my release 
and severely rebuking him. I said to myself 
at that time, I will watch the future history of 
this man, and I am now, after sixty years, not 
disappointed. 

During the War of the Rebellion a com- 
pany of Confederate soldiers demolished the 
old post in search of nails and such other 
things as they needed. Some twenty-five 
years back a young cow man, with his newly 
married wife, bought a half section of land 
down there, taking where the post stood, and 
utilized the stones of the old government 
buildings for the erection of the big house 
yonder and the fences. His bride's father, 
being a well-to-do stockman in the neighbor- 
hood, gave her as her dowry five hundred 
head of fine young cows. Her brother, who 
was in company with the old gentleman, on 



170 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

finding out what was done, went and drove the 
young cattle back and replaced them with the 
same number of old scrubs. The young cow 
man, on coming home and finding what his 
brother-in-law had done, sent him his old 
cows and told him to go to Jericho with them 
or somewhere else not so far away. This led 
to family feuds and bad blood in the neigh- 
borhood generally. One morning about sun- 
rise the young cow man went out forgetting 
to go armed, and he had pointed in his face 
from behind a stone fence a half-dozen cocked 
Winchesters, with the demand to surrender. 
He did so, was taken to prison about thirty 
miles away and that night was shot to pieces. 
Two years passed and the young widow 
married a preacher, and he not being accus- 
tomed to the use of the branding irons, his wife 
sold her cattle and invested her money in 
sheep, believing that her good man could 
manage easily two fiocks — a woolly one and 
one that was n't woolly. The latter flock was 
sometimes troublesome enough, for the frol- 
icking wethers would stray away and mingle 
with the ewes of neighboring herders, and 
that would raise the dust on the prairie. The 



THE UNLUCKY RANCH. I71 

woolly flock, however, was the one that filled 
his soul with sorrow six days in the week. The 
herders were unreliable, and though strictly 
commanded not to, would get drunk on duty, 
and then they could n't tell a sheep from a 
goat, nor their own from a neighbor's flock, 
and the result invariably was a scattering of 
thousands and a total loss of hundreds. The 
scab, too, struck the woolly flock and this cost 
thousands of dollars and a world of annoy- 
ance. Then the politicians reduced the tariff 
on wool, and the railroad companies raised 
the freight on wethers to Chicago, and the 
consequence was dead loss instead of much 
gain ; and then, to crown all, a dreadful winter 
following a long drouth, which melted that 
woolly flock away like snow in spring. 

In the mean time the preacher went about 
aiding the starving Indians who were neg- 
lected by their government, and apparently by 
the rain-making powers, and thus differed from 
his wife's brother already referred to, who 
commanded him to cease his efforts and let 
them go to some other hunting grounds. 
The preacher would not recognize his author- 
ity over him in such a matter, and then began 



172 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

to arise a spirit of opposition and wrongful 
treatment almost incredible. That preacher 
to-day is a homeless wanderer, for though 
he invested five thousand dollars of his own 
money in improvements on the ranch it has 
been taken from him and all that it contained. 
A young man from Scotland, who was look- 
ing over the country for a cow ranch, cast his 
eyes on this one and was captivated by the 
beauty of the scene, for it was in the spring- 
time of the year, and he rented it, and while 
waiting for the proper season to buy cattle, he 
planted forty acres in watermelons. He was 
a visionary youth and believed that he could 
show the natives how to make money raising 
watermelons. When he planted the seed he 
would sit for hours on yon cross fence looking 
at his melon patch and impatient for the 
sprouting of the vines through the soil. At 
last they came and then the watery fruit fol- 
lowed. Tom Greenlees was now full of 
expectation by day, and of bright dreams by 
night. He saw himself a wealthy ranchman 
away in the future, with lots of servants round 
about him. When the watermelons grew 
and grew, till they were large enough to 



THE UNLUCKY RANCH. 173 

winter a sheep inside, Tom loaded his 
wagon and started for the railroad, believing 
that he could sell his melons at about twenty- 
five cents apiece. He left home about sun 
up, and at noon he rested in the shade of a 
large tree and made his dinner of water- 
melons. That was a sad mistake for Tom. 
As he drove his team along the road all that 
afternoon, the cattle would lift their heads 
in amazement, listen a little, and then in 
terror make for the woods, believing that a 
new sort of a cyclone was coming. The loafer- 
wolf would look down from the brow of a 
hill at him and begin howling in unison with 
the music that came from the passing melon 
wagon. 

It was a sorrowful drive for Tom. But he 
was glad when he saw a negro cabin by the 
roadside, and coming up to it, he begged in 
mercy's name to be taken in and cured. 
The old " aunty," who was mistress of the 
cabin, thought him at first crazy and barred 
the door ; but seeing him writhing in pain on 
his melon bed, with the tears rolling down 
his cheeks, she pitied him and ventured out. 
She lifted him down tenderly from his wagon 



174 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

and stretched him on the hearth before her 
fireplace and argued with the coHc a priori 
and exposteriori, but to Httle purpose. In 
the mean time a half dozen of her pick- 
aninnies got into the wagon and made havoc 
of Tom's watermelons. Sadly and painfully 
the railroad was reached, to find that the 
watermelons were selling at about two cents 
each, and even at that you could only trade 
them for something else. Tom traded his 
load for a fifty-cent hat and when he settled 
with the doctor he was poorer by five dollars 
than he was when he left home. All this 
soured the honest Scotchman, and though a 
good Christian at home in his native land, he 
took to swearing awfully at things in general, 
and at watermelons in particular. It was 
just terrifying to be within a mile of him at 
any hour of the day. Shortly after his return 
from the railroad, an old cow belonging to 
a neighbor got into his melon patch, and 
though she could do but little financial dam- 
age, the melons being now worthless, Tom 
made the air blue and the hills tremble with 
his oaths, and in a fit of anger put a pitchfork 
into her side. This brought the owner of the 



THE UNLUCKY RANCH. 1 75 

COW to remonstrate, and seeing him approach 
his gate the fooHsh Scot challenged him to a 
fistic encounter. 

"We don't fight that way in this country," 
said the neighbor ; '' but how does that suit 
you ? " Tom fell, but the shot was not fatal, 
and when the bullet was extracted and he 
was able to go about again, he bade farewell 
to ranching in the wild West and made long 
strides in the direction of " bonnie Dundee." 

Others also rented or bought the place, but 
the same bad luck followed all alike, and the 
man who now owns it has not procured it 
justly, and when he is through with it he is 
likely to say that his ranch was a bag with 
holes in the bottom. 

Having thus rested our horses and viewed 
the unlucky ranch, we passed on, discussing 
as we did so the strange fatality that seems 
to cling to certain places and persons. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

THE STRUGGLE. 

OOME years ago a very bitter feeling 
*^ existed between the cattle men and 
farmers in Northwestern Texas, because of 
the fencing in of great tracts of land by the 
former to the great disadvantage of the 
latter. 

The cow man wanted the whole earth for 
himself and fenced in whole counties of it 
that did not belong to him. The farmer, 
therefore, found himself often shut up in a 
corner, out of which he could not get unless 
he traveled ten or twenty miles, perhaps, 
to visit a neighbor who might only be half 
a mile off. This made bad blood between 
the parties, and the wire-cutting war began, 
which forced the governor to call a special 
meeting of the Legislature to put a stop 
to it. 

On the heels of this a terrible two years' 
drouth followed. My church at the time 

176 



THE STRUGGLE. I 77 

was composed almost entirely of cattle men, 
but I took the part of the farmers, who were 
in great distress, even on the verge of 
starvation. I appealed for aid through some 
New York papers, and small sums came, 
with which I fed all who applied to my 
utmost ability. 

Forty counties were in distress and the 
suffering was alarming. I preached to my 
church the duty of assisting the suffering 
farmers, but they would not. I then told 
the farmers not to die of hunger while there 
was a hoof on the prairie or in the woods, 
and they did n't, either. This caused a com- 
mittee of relief to be organized, and I was 
asked to come up North and solicit aid. 
I came, but did the soliciting publicly before 
representative bodies of every sort, from St. 
Louis to New York, and from Boston to 
Washington City. This method was not 
taken into calculation by the cattle men who 
sent me, and as I exposed the condition of 
the country in a way they did not like, they 
called to me to return home ; and as I did 
not till I got through with my mission, they 
opposed me through the press to their 



178 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

Utmost. The reason for this opposition was 
the fact that at that time many of the lead- 
ing cattle men of Texas were busy selling 
off their ranches here in the North and in 
Europe to syndicates, who were buying up 
land and cattle without proper investigation. 
The late Jay Gould also opposed me through 
his secret agents, for he owned the Texas 
Pacific Railroad and I was hindering immi- 
gration. The good people, however, of the 
North contributed, but not what they would 
were I allowed to tell the truth unopposed. 
I could write a very interesting book on this 
theme alone, but will only state briefly that 
after three months' pleading in the North I 
returned to Texas, where the capitalistic 
press was cursing me and my enemies, 
burning me in effigy, and hanging me to 
lamp-posts. I did not care, however, what 
they did to me in this way, and I went boldly 
on my mission through the State, conscious 
of the integrity of my purpose and strong 
in the feeling of independence because of 
the silver hole which I owned in Nevada. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

THE VICTORY. 

^ I "O confirm what I published, and to plead 
^ even more strongly than I did, the 
judges of forty counties met in Albany, where 
I lived, and appointed me as their special 
agent to go first to the State Legislature, 
and if that body did not respond, I was to 
proceed to Congress and demand instant 
relief. The distress now was becoming 
terrible. 

On my way to Austin, the capital of the 
State, I called on the editor of The Dallas 
News, the main paper in the employ of the 
capitalists for my abuse. He had just pub- 
lished three editorials denouncing me as a 
liar and fraud of the first water. I gave the 
gentleman to understand that if he did n't 
change his tone I would shortly head a pro- 
cession of five thousand starving farmers, 
who would soon demolish both him and his 
paper without ceremony. I demanded an 



l80 TWENTY- FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

immediate reply, and he begged for a few 
hours till he could call a meeting of the board 
of managers. I consented, and next morn- 
ing there was a complete somersault and a 
loud calling for subscriptions, for the needy 
farmers, and an editorial endorsing my efforts. 
Calling also at Waco, where the State cattle 
men's convention was in session, I presented 
myself before the cattle barons and was given 
an opportunity to speak, which I did, stirring 
up the wrath of some to such an extent that 
I was cautioned lest there might be some 
powder burned. In going before the Legis- 
lature I was accorded an opportunity to speak 
before a joint meeting of both branches, and 
spoke for two hours, showing the need of 
relief and the treatment I had received at the 
hands of my opponents, and especially of 
Governor Ireland, who was then the popular 
candidate for the United States Senate. 

During my speech the governor, who was 
listening, sent a page boy with a letter mak- 
ing a sort of apology and excusing himself 
because he did not know the matter was so 
serious. When I got through, the verdict of 
all was that I had killed the governor for the 



THE VICTORY. l8l 

Senate ; and sure enough, when the election 
came off in a few days he was retired to pri- 
vate life and Reagan was sent in his place to 
Washington. Next morning, after my plea 
for the farmers, a bill was set a-going giving 
one hundred thousand dollars, and with this 
help the poor tillers of the soil managed to 
get along until the rains came and every one 
had plenty. This completed my work and 
my vindication before the whole country. 

My efforts were solely humanitarian, and 
so far as I was concerned I did my work with 
no thought of what might be the future con- 
sequences to myself. My reward, however, 
came in due time. 

The cattle men of my church requested 
my resignation, and they got it, and a fare- 
well sermon too, which perhaps they have 
not forgotten yet. 

Mass meetings were held and resolutions 
passed urging me to stay in Texas, but I left. 
I left feeling that I had done nothing but my 
duty to a deserving people who needed some 
Moses to save them from the Aarons who 
worshiped the Golden Calf. The ill-will, 
however, gendered during that struggle has 



152 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

followed me ever since, and cruel, unjust, and 
treacherous conduct on the part of my wife's 
near relatives, who are among the leading 
cattle men of the State, has now robbed me 
of property, wife, and children. 

Ah, me ! this is not a world where a man, 
if he is a preacher, can afford, if he wants a 
roof over his head, to take the part of the 
oppressed poor against the power of capital. 

" He who ascends the mountain-tops shall find 

The loftiest peaks most wrapt in cloud and snow ; 
He who surpasses or subdues mankind 
Must look on the hate of those below." 

The Texas of to-day is a civilized place. 
I built three churches there, and preached a 
great many good sermons ; I did, indeed. Any 
man's life and property are as safe there now 
as anywhere else, but you are not considered 
as belonging to the aristocracy unless you 
have cattle drinking water from all the water 
holes of the prairies, and eating grass on a 
thousand hills. The cow man will not drink 
at a saloon bar with a sheep man or a farmer. 
No, indeed, he is too good for that, and if he 
gets religion he won't drink at the bar at all. 
The sheepman of Texas is an honest man, 



THE VICTORY. 1 83 

if there are no other sheep within reach of 
him. He is a sort of Arab wandering about 
with his flock from water hole to water hole. 
He is a lonely man without any family wor- 
ship, and all days of the week are alike to 
him. At night he sleeps in a little round 
tent close by his sheep with his weather eye 
open on the wolves. He usually gets three 
crops a year ; one of lambs in the spring, one 
of wool in the summer, and one of bones in 
the winter. He is not happy, however, for 
though a democrat in politics, he is a great 
protectionist. He chews tobacco and swears 
at all free traders as the children of the 
wicked one. Yet, for all this, he is an honest 
man. 

The Texas farmer is a kind man and given 
to hospitality. He sleeps in the house at 
night and under a shady tree in the day. 
He is religious as a rule and goes to church 
on Sunday like any other Christian. He is 
not lazy, only born tired ; and what are Texas 
trees good for if you don't enjoy their shade, 
so cool and delightful? There you can lie 
down and be at peace with Texas and all the 
world beside. 



184 TWENTY- FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

I like the dashing cow man of Texas and 
the honest sheep man, but I love the farmer 
down there. Cotton raising is his main crop, 
and it takes thirteen months in the year to 
do it too, but he is courageous and industri- 
ous, and he produces what keeps many of 
the cotton mills of the world a-running. 

I don't believe that the Texas farmer is 
lazy, though I got so lazy myself when there, 
and^lept so much in the shade, that I had no 
time to examine him. There is no difference 
between a man that is born tired and a man 
who becomes tired, and neither should be 
blamed, for nature does it. 

The Texas farmer is perfectly orthodox 
both as a Christian and as a politician, and 
you need never be at a loss, if you are 
hungry, for a meal of victuals, and never for 
a good bed to sleep in, even if he has him- 
self to go to the hayloft. 

I will never allow any one in my presence 
to say a disrespectful word of the Texas 
farmer, for I know him as a kind, good man 
who has a heart as big as his barn. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

THE BUSY EAST. 

'T^HIS country here called New England 
^ is considered a Christian section, I 
believe, but I have seen some queer speci- 
mens here as well as in the West and South- 
west. There, for instance, is Mr. Dry-goods, 
an elder in a church hereabouts. He is just 
like my old friend Jacobs down in Texas. 
Shortly after I came to this country up here 
he subscribed two hundred dollars towards 
my church debt at Fall River, and then went 
about and begged for it from certain Sunday- 
schools. He got it all but eighty dollars and 
this he refused to pay because a certain friend 
of his was put out of office in the church at 
Fall River for using in his own business the 
Lord's money. Well, remembering that I 
had that silver hole out in Nevada, I gave 
him his character in writing just as it is, and 
he put a knife in the bag that took my salary 
from New York, and cut a hole so big in it 

185 



1 86 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

that it has never brought me a dollar since. 
It will not do for any one section of this coun- 
try to imagine that it is very much superior 
to the rest. Man is man the world over. 

Shortly after coming here a great strike of 
the mill operatives took place in the city I 
lived in. When this strike was on, and the 
suffering among the operatives was becom- 
ing serious, a deputation from the Weavers' 
Executive Committee came to my house 
about twelve o'clock one night, and asked 
me to meet with them early next morning, to 
see if I could assist in bringing the opposing 
factions to some sort of agreement. I com- 
plied, and urged for the immediate resumption 
of work. I then, by request, went with 
them to the park and addressed the great 
gathering there in favor of ending the strike. 

This was going against the current of feel- 
ing, and when a show of hands was called for, 
not many responded. Feeling sorry for the 
people in what I considered their blindness 
to the existing conditions, I brought on the 
" rousements," as we preachers used to do 
at camp meetings out West, when sinners 
were stiff-necked, and spoke so loud and long 



THE BUSY EAST. 1 87 

that I was laid up after for several days with 
sore lungs. I had an overwhelming feeling 
within me that I was speaking on the side of 
God and humanity, and therefore felt deter- 
mined that the great assemblage should think 
as I did, and I succeeded. But success in 
the great efforts of one's life is sometimes 
followed by unpleasant consequences. 

The same summer's sun that clothes the 
fields with beauty brings the mosquito from 
the swamp. Our joys and sorrows are near 
akin, and the sweetest song of triumph has 
its undertones of sadness. The cause of 
labor belongs to the Master Workman of the 
Universe, and not to scheming politicians. 
He who would honestly speak out for labor's 
highest interest may expect opposition even 
from those for whom he proclaims, for so it 
was with the perfect One some two thousand 
years ago. 

I am pleased to know that I have the respect 
and good will of a large number of the people 
there still, though some speak against me, 
because of misrepresentations sent abroad 
among them by interested parties. Three 
years ago they were kind enough to send 



1 88 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

me to the Legislature of this State, and 
while there I cautioned against the further 
reduction of the hours of labor for the time 
being, seeing that the year before there was 
a reduction of two hours a week made below 
any other State in the Union. This led 
many to suppose that I had deserted their 
cause, but they are beginning now to see 
that the stand I took in the Legislature was 
really the only one that could be taken at 
the time for their own best interests. 

I believe in the eight-hour workday for 
women and children when a national law 
compels every State to grant it. 

The discussion was over a bill Introduced 
in the House of Representatives to make 
the weekly work time fifty-four hours. I 
opposed this bill on the ground that it would 
greatly cripple the manufacturers of Massa- 
chusetts, while other New England States 
run their mills sixty hours, and the South 
went even as high as seventy. I could 
see in the forced reduction meanwhile but 
disaster for the operatives themselves, as it 
always happens that they, more than any 
one else, have to bear the consequences of 
profitless manufacturing. 



THE BUSY EAST. 1 89 

The main argument of the advocates of 
the bill was the necessity of constant agita- 
tion in order to carry the measure, but I am 
not worth a cent on parade, and never was, 
hence often a failure. Give me a good, hon- 
est object to fight for, and I will go into it with 
all my heart, but I will never burn powder for 
the sake of making smoke and noise. 

While in the Legislature I did not make 
many speeches, but did on a certain day 
take part in a discussion over a bill intro- 
duced to do away with the State Fast Day. 
I advocated the measure, seeing that the 
day was no longer observed as in the days 
of old, when a little chap, who was a 
descendant of the Puritans, sprang to his 
feet and shouted : " Mr. Speaker, I want to 
ask the gentleman from Fall River if he 
went to church with his parents when a boy 
in Massachusetts." 

I replied : *' Mr. Speaker, this man is 
insinuating that I am a foreigner. 

*'I acknowledge the corn, but I think on 
that very account I am better qualified to 
make laws for this State than he is. I came 
into this State clothed and in my right mind ; 



IQO TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

he came in naked and had no mind at all. 
I came here after deliberation and due con- 
sideration, of my own free will ; he was 
brought in and had no say-so in the matter. 
I came here paying my passage money as I 
came along, and he got in free. Am not 
I the better man ? " 

That legislator never asked me another 
question while I was there. I suppose, 
however, that when he and I are up yonder 
in the Great Assembly Hall, where people 
are gathered from all the tribes of earth, 
that if I should say anything that did not 
suit his prejudices, he will be jumping to 
his feet and shouting to the presiding offi- 
cer : " Mr. President, I would like to know 
if the gentleman went to church with his 
parents when a boy in Massachusetts ! " 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

THE EASTERN WOMAN. 

T WANT to say just a word or two on the 
^ New England woman, in the hope that 
she will hear it. If I were a young man and 
wanted to select a wife, I do not know that I 
could go anywhere in this broad land to find 
abetter than can be found right here in great 
abundance. I will go further than this, and 
say that for a real, womanly wife you cannot 
find her superior anywhere on this round 
earth. I say this in all seriousness and after 
much knowledge of the ordinary woman as 
she is found to-day in all her tribes, nations, 
and societies. This clearly understood, I 
would say to the New England woman, 
'' Sister, you have a great mission before you 
in regard to the West, and if you fail in your 
duty there must come, sooner or later, another 
opening of the heavens, and another angelic 
manifestation of a positive character which 
will introduce a messenger who will speak 

191 



192 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

both to you and the Western man in the 
name and by the authority of God Almighty. 
You are now doing something, I fully know, 
in the way of sending educational and gospel 
institutions to the far West to enlighten and 
save your brothers there, and not a word from 
me will ever discourage you from doing a 
thousand times more hereafter in the same 
way than you have been doing in the past. 
I can heartily bear testimony to the good you 
are doing from what I have seen in the West 
of your labors of love. What you must, 

HOWEVER, DO IS TO GIVE YOURSELF ! " 

That, my friend, would be my last and all- 
important message to the Eastern woman, if 
I were never again to put foot on her native 
soil. She is not at present giving herself as 
God intended she should, and if she will 
continue in her course the social equilibrium 
of this country will go on from bad to worse, 
until there will be such a shaking from sea to 
sea as will either destroy or create anew. 
To better show you what I mean I will point 
to ancient Roman and Jewish histories. For 
many hundred years the republic of Rome 
was, socially, almost in every sense a model 



THE EASTERN WOMAN. 1 93 

even to our present Christendom. The mar- 
riage relation between the sexes was then 
honored, and truth, frugahty, and virtue were 
supreme. Gradually, however, because of 
military and national aggrandizement, the 
young men spread themselves out over the 
world, leaving their sisters at home, and these 
sisters in their turn took to ways and manners 
of life that were not conducive to the highest 
domestic morality, brought about such a state 
of society that marriage was utterly ignored, 
and soon the republic went under, and on its 
ruins rose the empire which finally destroyed 
the nation from centre to circumference. In 
vain did Augustus, the first Roman emperor, 
pass laws compelling marriage between the 
sexes. The disease was too deeply rooted in 
all classes of society for that, as you can 
easily understand by reading Paul's Epistle 
to the Romans. 

One great reason for the introduction of 
Christianity was the elevation of marriage 
and proper establishment of the family. 
The Jew as well as the Roman was slighting 
the divinely ordained institution, now as never 
before, and needed to have *' the heart of the 



194 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

fathers turned to the children," and because 
Jew and Roman aHke turned a deaf ear to 
him who began his works of divine power at 
a wedding in Cana, thus putting honor on 
marriage above all other institutions, the one 
was scattered abroad without a home or a 
country, and the other was blotted from off 
the face of the earth. 

Is there not a word of warning in all this 
to this great Western republic ? How do we 
find matrimonial matters to-day ? Decidedly 
out of gear. The young men are no longer 
wanted in factories, stores, or offices, and are 
crowding out West in search of employment 
and the gold of the mountains, leaving their 
sisters behind just as the young Romans did, 
and we find them by the thousand out yonder, 
wifeless and homeless. Have I not seen 
them in Texas and Nevada ? Do I not know 
that they would gladly marry Eastern girls if 
they would only come out to them ? Have I 
not seen the degradation of Indian women by 
the hardened miners of the Pacific Coast ? Is 
there not rising up here in the East and yon- 
der in the West a condition of things that is 
ruinous to the nation ? You may smile at 



THE EASTERN WOMAN. 1 95 

this which I have just dipped from a Boston 
paper, but it shows that the unmarried women 
of Canada propose to give more substantial 
evidence of good will to their brothers on the 
Pacific Coast than even gospel ordinances. 

AN UNEQUAL DISTRIBUTION OF THE FAIR SEX IN CANADA. 

Vancouver, B. C, April 16. — The mayor of Vancou- 
ver has received a peculiar letter from Toronto, written 
in the interests of the young women in Toronto and other 
Eastern Canadian cities. In this unique epistle the writer 
states that, according to statistics, there is a shortage in 
the female population in the northwest territories and 
British Columbia amounting to about forty thousand, and 
there is in Eastern Canada a corresponding overplus of 
unmarried women. In order to equalize matters it is 
proposed to send young women of good health and moral 
character West to be distributed where the demand is 
greatest, and for this purpose it is sought to establish a 
home at Vancouver for the reception and distribution of 
the young women for British Columbia. 

The very thing proposed by the good women 
of Canada is what should be taken up and 
considered seriously by the New England 
women. For the same thing is, perhaps 
even more so, true of this section than of 
Canada. What is wanted in our new States 
and Territories are women that will be true 



196 TWENTi^-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

wives to those rough, lonely fellows who are 
now living a life that is degrading to both 
themselves and others. The Chinese and 
other nations that live through the ages are 
those that have their men and women go 
hand in hand to the remotest parts of their 
territories and marry according to some well- 
established system. 

If the Western man is to be kept from 
becoming a savage, he must have the Eastern 
woman to accompany him to his Western 
home. He needs her refining influences in 
the hour of his prosperity, and her soothing 
hand in the hour of adversity. 

" For contemplation he, and valor, formed ; 
For softness she, and sweet, attractive grace." 

This does not imply but that there are 
women now living in the wild West. There 
are some of course, but not enough to go 
round, and because of this shortage the 
native young woman, as a rule, is petulant, 
narrow in her sympathies, and much given 
to running home to her mother when she is 
in the least crossed. 

This is why the new States and Territories 



THE EASTERN WOMAN. 1 97 

have such easy-going divorce laws. The 
men that made those laws had in mind the 
possibility of their being needed by themselves 
to get rid of a truant wife at some time or 
other. I will just mention one instance to 
show you how badly a man gets mated some- 
times where men are plentiful and women 
scarce. Jim Anderson had a cow ranch far 
out in the southern part of the Indian nation. 
He stumbled across a girl there whose father 
kept a small store on the banks of the Koon 
River, and he loved her at sight, proposed, 
and was accepted all in one day. The Koon 
River at times overflows its banks and forms 
here and there what might be called lagoons. 
When this happens, it is not always easy for 
you to get to the point you want to reach. 
Jim Anderson was dead in love with his girl, 
and used to go to see her every few days, 
lest some other fellow should run away with 
her. On one of those love-sick visits he 
came to the neighborhood of the Koon, but 
was debarred by a lake in front of him from 
reaching her father's house. It was night, 
and the moon hung high over the tall, red 
pine trees. Thus poor Romeo could do 



198 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

nothing but sit on a log looking at the play- 
ful frogs, and sing over the waters of the 
Koon to his Juliet till the daylight brought 
the mud boat to his relief ; and here is what 
he sang : — 

" Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Koon, 
How can ye sing so sweet and clear? 
How can ye chant, ye little toads. 
And I so far from Mary dear? 
Thou 'It break my heart, thou warbling frog 

That paddles through the silvery sea ; 
Thou minds me o' the coming joys. 
When Mary brings the cake to me. 

" Oft hae I row'd on bonnie Koon 

To see the oak and redwood twine. 
And ilka crow sung to its mate, 

Oh, where ? oh, where is baby mine ? 
Wi' lightsome heart I pulled the oar, 

And Mary's lamb did sweetly sing, 
While she and I wi' joyfu' glee 

Spoke softly o' the wedding ring. 

" But now I sit by bonnie Koon, 

And waiting for the swift canoe. 
While Mary sighs, and all forlorn. 

Sits waiting for her own cuckoo. 
Thou 'It strike me dead, ye cruel hours. 

That slowly pass to yesterday ; 
Ye mind me o' the lazy sloth 

That climbs the trees of Uruguay." 



THE EASTERN WOMAN. 1 99 

That 's how he sung about the Koon 
River when in love. By and by he got 
married, and then he sung the same song 
with considerable variation. His Mary Ann 
was a vain and frivolous creature who would 
pout and be disagreeable if things did not 
go to suit her. If, for instance, when out 
after his cattle, he did not get back when she 
thought he ought to, she would scold and fret 
about it ; and if he dared to say a cross 
word in reply, she would run home to her 
mother ; and then he would have to go after 
her and be lectured by the old lady. She 
had a big, rawboned brother, too, who used 
to abuse him when he saw fit, simply because 
he was unable to split as many rails a day as 
he could. Not providing for her jewelry and 
other fineries, she accused him of not loving 
her ; and to plague him, she would go out 
riding with more stylish young men than he 
was. As the years rolled by, this got to be 
too scandalously frequent, and then it got to 
be Jim's turn to scold for tardy returns on 
her part. He provided good books for her 
to read and a piano to play on, and did 
everything that an honest, industrious man 



200 TWENTY- FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

could do to make her contented and happy, 
but to no purpose. Two Httle children were 
born in this home, but even this did not have 
sufficient influence to keep her from riding 
out with her lovers. And leaving the two 
little tots one day alone, they wandered out 
into the woods to gather flowers, and one of 
them fell over a bluff and was killed. The 
father, on coming home, was crazed with 
grief and indignation, and, naturally enough, 
upbraided his wife for her shameless conduct. 
But can the Ethiopian change his skin, or 
the leopard his spots ? The same sun that 
softens butter will harden clay, and afflic- 
tions sometimes will only make bad people 
worse. When the dead child was laid away 
in its grave, one dark night she stole the 
living one and made off with one of her ad- 
mirers to Texas, leaving honest Jim Anderson 
wifeless and childless. He properly procured 
a divorce, and after a time went eastward to 
his own native land and procured a homely 
but honest girl, who made him a good, faith- 
ful wife. 

Some time before he got his second wife, 
he happened to be in the neighborhood of 



THE EASTERN WOMAN. 20I 

his first wife's girlhood home. He went and 
sat down and sung on the same old log on 
which he used to sing in praise of the Koon ; 
and this is how he did it : — 

" Ye banks and stumps o' slimy Koon, 

How can ye look to heaven above ? 
How can ye peep, ye hateful frogs, 

And falsely mutter o' your love ? 
Thou 'ast broke my heart, thou great bullfrog. 

That 's sprawling in the deep, green mire, 
Thou minds me o' the crocodile 

That 's down below in 'ternal fire. 

" Oft hae I rode, you ugly Koon, 

Along your muddy banks so drear, 
To see your logs and horrid swamps 

That 's cost me now so very dear. 
Your lands and sheep are all a fraud, 

And so are all your ravens black ; 
Thou art the thief that stole my peace. 

But ah ! some day thou 'It be caught ! 

" Thou loathsome Koon ! thou nasty Koon ! 

Your reeds and weeds, your frogs and crows, 
I bid farewell forevermore, 

And seek in other climes repose. 
Thou, too, farewell, deceitful wife. 

That 's stole my darling child away ! 
If 't will give you joy to know it 's so. 

Then know that thou hast cursed my life." 

Jim finally left the Indian nation, taking 



202 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

his second wife and cattle to Kansas, where 
he is now a happy and prosperous cow man 
and farmer. 

Such men as this are out yonder by the 
hundreds of thousands, and they would 
gladly welcome to their bachelor halls home- 
loving, virtuous women from the old States, 
who would be unto them true and loving 
wives. The Eastern woman has a great 
mission before her in life. And where the 
field of that mission is should be as plain 
to her as if God had written it in letters of 
fire across the heavens — the wild West. 

There she is needed, and there she should 
be, and there she will stand '' clad in the beauty 
of a thousand stars," if she will but act her 
part in harmony with her nobler instincts* 

At the very beginning it was said from 
heaven that it was not good for man to be 
alone ; and if it was not good for him then, 
when the trials of life were few compared to 
those of the present day, what else but 
positive evil can be the lot of him who is 
roughing it alone in the wild West ? It is, 
indeed, an evil which no man should be 
called upon to endure. 



THE EASTERN WOMAN. 203 

As a rule it is the noblest, the bravest, the 
most enterprising that go to the front. The 
drones of the hive stay in the rear. Are 
these daring sons of America, who risk their 
lives fighting the rude Goliaths of the fron- 
tier that the unbounded wealth of the great 
West may be developed, to do it alone, 
without the inspiration which comes from 
woman's companionship ? Must they walk 
the wide plains, cultivate the rich valleys, 
climb the mountains, and dig into the bowels 
of the earth without the music of a woman's 
voice or the blessing of a woman's presence? 

Let the women of the East awake to their 
duty to the wild West, and on some such 
lines as those on which the Canadian women 
are moving, let them provide true and loving 
wives for their roaming brothers that are far 
out towards the setting sun. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

THE MARRIAGE. 

/~\NE hundred years, or thereabout, ago 
^^ there sailed across the Atlantic and set- 
tled in Nortli Carolina where he farmed and 
owned slaves, a member of Clan Campbell, 
— that is one of the Scottish clans formerly 
inhabiting a large part of the Western High- 
lands, whose chief was the Duke of Argyle. 

In the course of years this man and the 
Highland lassie he took with him as his wife 
had round about them a large family, one of 
whom, at least, a daughter, is still living, 
though considerably over the allotted span of 
life. 

Inheriting the energy and enterprising 
spirit of her paternal clansmen, this lady 
married, and with her Carolinian husband 
went to Northwestern Texas, far out beyond 
the limits of civilization, and there engaged 
in cattle raising. Surrounded on every side 
by hostile Comanche Indians, they defended 

204 



THE MARRIAGE. 205 

their cattle and raised a family, mostly boys, 
who knew from their childhood how to ride 
horseback and fight the redskins. 

Into the same region, and about the same 
time, moved also another young couple, 
natives of Alabama, and engaged in the same 
line of business. When the children of these 
cattle ranchers grew up to manhood and 
womanhood they interlaced in wedlock, and 
now they far eclipse the fathers in cattle 
raising. 

Some forty years after the departure of 
the Highland clansman from his native 
heath, a nephew of his married a sister of 
my mother. They also crossed the briny 
deep, and settled in the backwoods of 
Canada, near where the city of London now 
stands. There, with the vigor of his race, this 
younger clansman bravely faced the prowling 
Indians and savage beasts, while he stretched 
at his feet the big trees of the forest. He 
too raised a large family, now prosperous 
and enterprising in various spheres of life, 
but neither the Canadian clansman nor his 
uncle in North Carolina knew anything of 
the whereabouts of the other. 



206 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

About four years ago, and just a year 
before his death, he being now about eighty- 
three years old, I visited my Canadian rela- 
tion on his beautiful farm, and while sitting 
together before his large open fireplace, he 
happened to remark that an uncle of his 
went to North Carolina a long while ago and 
settled there. The thought entered my mind 
like a flash that in all probability the venerable 
Texas lady, who, by the way, was about his 
own age, and extremely like him in appear- 
ance, and the mother of my wife's two 
brothers-in-law, was his cousin. Her maiden 
name too was Campbell and she spoke Gaelic, 
the native language of her parents, in her 
girlhood days, all of which she herself told 
me. 

Investigation was set on foot, and sure 
enough, ** Aunt Ann," as we called her, was 
my uncle's full cousin. I was thus linked to 
the North Carolina branch of Clan Camp- 
bell through marriage, and to the Canadian 
branch through blood. 

How came this about ? 

Along the frontier of Texas, when I 
went there, our government maintained a 



•THE MARRIAGE. 207 

number of military posts for the protec- 
tion of the overland mail to California, 
and also the settlers along the route, against 
the wild Comanches. It was, therefore, 
my privilege and pleasure to make the 
acquaintance of a large number of officers 
and their troops, and also to preach to them 
on occasion. When Commander Lincoln, 
son of a New England minister, was in 
charge at Fort Griffin, he used quite often to 
send his carriage a hundred miles east and 
take me out to preach to his men. 

Among the officers at that post was a 
*' brither Scot " from Edinburgh, who seemed 
to have taken to war as a duck does to water. 
When quite a youth he ran away from home 
and fought in the Crimean War, then in the 
War of the Rebellion in India, then again in 
China. 

Crossing the Atlantic he fought in the 
Confederate Army, and then again in Mexico, 
against Emperor Maximilian. Recrossing 
the Atlantic, he fought in France against 
Prussia, and when he could find no fighting 
to do anywhere else he went out to fight 
Indians in Texas. 



208 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

An intimacy sprung up between us, and 
when poor ''Jack" was sick, and nigh unto 
death, the Bishop of Texas (for Jack was an 
Episcopahan) asked me to go out and see 
him. I went, and arrived just one hour after 
Jack was laid away in his soldier grave with 
military honors. 

That evening a friend requested me to 
visit with him a certain cow ranch, the owner 
of which was originally from Alabama. Then 
began the real joys and sorrows of my life. 
I did n't do like Isaac, send a servant for her 
afterwards, but I went myself, taking another 
preacher with me, three days' journey towards 
the setting sun. I don't believe in omens, 
good or bad, and I don't think, after consult- 
ing with myself, that I am superstitious, and 
yet I tell the following for the honest opinion 
of those that believe in signs. The first day 
out, one of our horses got the colic and it 
would lie down in the traces and try to roll 
over. We traded the brute off for another 
that evening. The second day out, our new 
horse had the scour so bad that we took ten 
dollars for it, and bought another from an 
honest farmer with whom we put up that 



THE MARRIAGE. 2O9 

night. The third day's new horse had a 
mental ailment, and when it trotted ten miles 
from home it became exceedingly homesick 
and uncertain as to the way it should go. 
We preachers tried by gentle words to per- 
suade it to continue the onward journey, but 
it would n't. We pulled it by the ears, but it 
stuck its forefeet forward and acted more like 
a mule than a decent horse. We tried the 
whip on his hind-quarters, but to no purpose. 
My companion was much versed in the 
science of horseology, and he gave me a 
pointer on how to deal with a balky horse. 
First he unhitched it, then rode it round and 
round blindfolded till it was so dizzy that it 
could hardly stand up, and then he hitched it 
again, still blindfolded, and told it to go and 
it did. We had no more trouble with that 
beast, for it imagined that it was going back 
home when it was n't. 

When we arrived at one of the old man's 
outer gates, I jumped from the buggy to 
open it and my bran new broadcloth coat 
caught in the barbed wire fence and it was 
torn to such an extent that I, too, then had a 
mental ailment and got uncertain as to the 



2IO TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

way I should go. As there was not a tailor 
within two hundred miles of us, my friend 
urged me on, threatening to blindfold me if 
I did n't. On the following day the knot 
was tied and we started for Galveston on our 
marriage tour, and after fifteen hours of jos- 
tling and thumping in a barbarous old stage- 
coach over the rockiest, roughest road mortal 
man ever rode on, we reached a railroad town 
about two o'clock in the morning to find all 
the hotels full, and so had to walk the streets 
till our train arrived about six hours after. 
The conjugal voyage thus started lasted just 
fifteen years and then our bark was beached. 
Truly, '' life is a mingled yarn.'* And when 
the mingling that has tears in it comes from 
the treachery of professed friends, the hatred 
of foes, or from your own impulsiveness it is 
bad enough, but when it arises from the 
dearest relation that can exist out of heaven, 
it is sorrowful in the extreme. Oh, it is a 
thousand times better to be disappointed in 
courtship than deceived in marriage, for the 
stem that the rose may bud on to-day will bud 
again to-morrow, but the tree that is dead in 
the morrow of wedlock is dead forever ! 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

THE KYLES OF BUTE. 

OINCE coming here to the East I have 
*^ succeeded in making a great many 
friends and enemies, just as I used to do in 
the wild West when I tried to do my duty. 

This world is not a place where a man can 
speak the truth and not be hated. The 
shadows are lengthening, however, and I 
must be going, I know not where, but there 
is a dear spot over the sea in the Kyles of 
Bute which I hope to see again before I end 
this pilgrimage. 

Don't you ever go to Scotland, brother, 
without visiting the Kyles of Bute. They 
are more beautiful than the Bosphorus. 

There is the home of my childhood, and 
though I say it myself, it is one of the most 
charming spots on earth. 

The surroundings are lovely, and when 
troubles crowd upon my path I go on fancy's 
wing and lie down in the soft woodland grass 



212 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

beside the brook yonder that goes laughing 
to the sea below. There the sun lingers in 
passing over, and when he sets behind the 
western isles that rise like sleeping kings 
out of the Atlantic, he sends back his golden 
rays to kiss the sweet-scented blossoms and 
glorify wood and heather. There the birds 
come from the South to build their nests and 
to linger long among the yellow leaves of 
autumn. I have seen them weep when they 
had to go back to Spain and France. The 
wild bee revels i-n winter on the honey he 
gathers there in summer. The night cannot 
stay there long in June and July, only a few 
hours. Go with me at two o'clock in the 
morning for about a mile up through the 
steep woods that rise from the shore where 
my boyhood's home is, and then climb an- 
other mile or so back of this up a steep 
heathery mountain so beautifully terraced as 
if the Creator had made it with a golden 
spade, to the level ridge above the clouds. 
Now cast yourself on your back in the 
heather and watch the larks rise from their 
dewy beds on all sides of you, follow their 
upward flight singing as they go up and up 



THE KYLES OF BUTE. 213 

into the ethereal blue. When they are so 
far up that you cannot see them you hear 
something that will make you imagine that 
you are on the plains of Bethlehem the night 
Christ was born. 

But the King of Day is sending ahead of 
him from the east his spears of light to tell 
of his approach. Rise up now and look 
down to the sea, so calm and glasslike, and 
there in the middle of a bay embosomed by 
the woods on the shore is a cottage, not large 
nor ornamental. How like a pine of the 
Sierras rises the smoke from the chimney ! 
But listen ! Hear the swelling concert that 
comes up from the woods blow. The mavises, 
the starlings, the blackbirds, the linnets, 
the cuckoos, and the robins, to say nothing 
of lesser songsters, all are trying to outdo 
each other in making the countryside re- 
sound with their marvelous melody. 

Descend now and enter the cottage by the 
sea. It is Milton Cottage, named after him 
who sung of Paradise. It is five o'clock in 
the morning, and the husband and father is 
breakfasting on porridge and milk, followed 
perhaps by a little tea. As he eats he casts 



214 TWENTY- FIVE YEARS A PARSON. 

a glance now and then on the old clock 
hanging- on the wall, for he would not be a 
moment late, for the world, in being at his 
daily toil down at the laird's. A little prayer 
is said for guidance to him and his for the 
day, and then he is off down the highway as 
happy as if he owned all the gold of Cali- 
fornia. On his return in the evening, and 
supper over, he digs or plants in the garden, 
or prunes the rose bushes around the cottage 
for an hour or two, or maybe listens to the 
youngsters repeating the shorter catechism. 
He sleeps the sleep of the just now among 
the "mouls" in the little churchyard down by 
the roadside, and his soul is with the angels. 
Twelve children went out from his old home, 
and the graves of some of them are scattered 
far and wide o'er mount and land and sea, 
but the eye of any of them never saw, nor 
the ear never heard coming from him that 
which memory rejects. 

Never saw the Kyles of Bute ? Why, it 
was there that Robert Burns met his High- 
land Mary, that Byron met the Maid of 
Athens, and Longfellow his Evangeline. 



THE KYLES OF BUTE. 215 

It was there, near Milton Cottage, that 
Jacob kissed Rachel and lifted up his voice 
and wept, and Tom Moore sighed over the last 
rose of summer. Oh ! this world is beautiful 
and the heavens are pretty, but the Kyles of 
Bute are bonnie. Yon cottage by the sea 
was only a peasant's cottage, but there was 
and is that about it which shall never die from 
this heart wherever I roam. 

"You may break, you may ruin the vase if you will, 
But the scent of the roses will cling to it still." 

Thus spake Parson Ralph Riley, and as 
the sun was now setting, he arose to leave, 
and as he did so, I could see that he was 
vexed at the wrongs of this wicked world, 
and even more so at the shams and hypoc- 
risies of some professing Christians. His 
narrative gives a pretty good idea of the 
manner of life in the wild West and South- 
west twenty-five years ago. There is no 
frontier any longer now to this country, and 
those who would experience the excitements 
of a new country must go to Africa. 



